It’s time to revisit the coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse.
With the news that he has been acquitted on all counts, don’t forget the ways that Dems and the corporate press came together to craft a false narrative in his case.
Let’s break down how we got here⤵️
We need to start with the media coverage that framed this case in the public mind.
To the press, Rittenhouse was as good as guilty when the news broke. So naturally, to @CNN, the people he shot in self defense were heroes & those defending him had “justified murder.”
This wasn’t just limited to CNN.
@nytimes put out what amounts to a hit piece on Rittenhouse because his “social media accounts showed strong support for officers.”
They even put out a piece about how right-wingers attacking protestors was some sort of phenomenon.
Never to be outdone, @MSNBC said the shooting was white supremacy and then went on to blame - who else - President Trump for “fueling violence,” sowing “chaos and disorder” and “encouraging vigilante justice” (peep that last guest)
Perhaps no one in the media has spent more time sharing inaccurate information than @JoyAnnReid. This was no exception.
She lumped Rittenhouse in with “white nationalist mobs” and accused Trump of “ethnic cleansing” (!!) for daring to defend Rittenhouse.
Once again, @briantylercohen hosts a show called “No Lie” and yet spouts nonsense and misinformation in a nearly unparalleled way.
You may remember that, later on in the news cycle, President Trump spoke about Rittenhouse, suggesting he acted in self defense.
@AP took this as an opportunity to fact check that, dinging Trump for - I kid you not - defending someone who “opposed racial-justice protestors”
Speaking of fact checks, here’s @PolitiFact claiming that Trump lied when he said Rittenhouse was trying to get away from protestors and was attacked - both details have since been confirmed by video.
Will you update your inaccurate post, Politifact? Or the gun charge details?
@NPR picked up on a similar sentiment, knocking Trump for “claiming, without evidence, that it appeared the gunman was acting in self-defense.”
Now we’ve had a court of law confirm it was using videos and context many of which were available at the time.
Again, the framing of what happened was always preposterous. Here’s @Yamiche from NPR claiming that the takeaway was meant to be “that ifs okay for a 17-year old to shoot people on the street who are unarmed, who are at a protest.”
This is impossible to square with the facts.
@washingtonpost and @AaronBlake made the same case. While they might’ve forgiven Trump had he only declined to denounce Rittenhouse, that he would “volunteer defenses” for someone who acted in self-defense was simply beyond the pale.
This is meant as straight news coverage.
Also, as a call out, this type of deceptive coverage is still going on.
During the trial, @Reuters described someone who attacked Rittenhouse as the “survivor of shooting by U.S, teen” while @CBSMornings said Rittenhouse “murdered two men” (h/t @BecketAdams)
I don’t know that one could even call this commentary from @NYMag journalism.
I don’t have space for all the awful coverage, but here’s a smattering from @USATODAY (doesn’t sound like it), @CBSNews (interesting the trending Twitter topics that make headlines) and @thedailybeast (“fanatic”).
The takeaway audience were meant to have was clear.
And wrong.
Perhaps the most famous accusations came not from the media but from elected representatives.
@AyannaPressley called Rittenhouse a “white supremacist domestic terrorist” while @IlhanMN just went with “domestic terrorist.”
I ask earnestly: is this not libelous?
The now-President, @JoeBiden, called Rittenhouse a white supremacist absent evidence.
I want to pause to drive that point home: the most powerful man on the planet used his influence & authority to libel a teenager while said teenager faced spurious, politically driven charges.
It’s hard to keep track of all the Democratic elected officials who baselessly accused Rittenhouse of being some variety of evil.
My two cents is that the world would be better if more men with guns showed up to town when the criminal anarchists descended and the police were told to stand down.
But even if you think differently, it is impossible to square this coverage with what actually happened.
All of this misinformation will only serve as an accelerant for America’s contentious conversations around race at a time when race relations are cratering.
And these brazen lies were told when a young man’s life quite literally was hanging in the balance.
My takeaway from this: I hope that Rittenhouse has a good attorney experienced in libel cases for the work ahead.
And I hope that everyday people remember the power the media & politicians have to destroy the life of an innocent man.
For what it’s worth, my understanding is that it’s really difficult to win a libel claim against the press or a public figure, even with something this egregious.
Whatever else you make of that fact, it certainly means that situations like this will continue to happen.
Also, for those who have asked about throwing me beer money, I’ve turned on tips. These have always been a labor of love but i won’t pretend they aren’t time intensive.
You can click the link on my profile (image below) to get there on mobile, and there’s also a Bitcoin option.
Just unbelievable framing here from the Times, as if it is some grave injustice that the prosecution in a criminal case must...meet a burden. nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/…
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The day after my 30th birthday I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.
Two years later, I’m in remission. I don’t talk much about what happened, but I wanted to write it down, both for myself, and in case it could help others.
If interested, follow along. ⤵️
This is admittedly uncomfortable for me. I’m trying to learn how to talk about the experience, because it’s obviously become a big part of my life.
If you aren’t interested in the details, I totally understand. But I want to get this story in one place.
In early 2022, I started getting headaches and dizzy spells. I thought they were just part of getting older.
But one morning I woke up and couldn’t get out of bed. My head was splitting. I started to get dizzy pretty often.
I’m sure you’ve all seen the protests and attendant anti-Semitism at many elite American universities. What you may not be aware of is the hypocrisy in how schools have handled them.
Do you remember what these places said about protests in 2020? I’ve got receipts. ⤵️
We’ve gotta start with @Columbia, given their central role in this drama.
In 2020, the university pledged to change how campus police operated, and said protests were part of a “heightened state of consciousness” on race & were driving the “revitalization of American democracy.”
That, unsurprisingly, led @Columbia to embrace defunding the police on their website, citing a professor.
It’s hard to square that sentiment with calling in police in riot gear to rough up students on campus, @Columbia.
Want to see a media conspiracy, based on Biden admin propaganda to smear a GOP governor, come into existence?
If so, follow along. Let’s revisit the media claim that Texas “physically barred” drowning migrants from entering the country.
Another long one ⤵️
Back in mid-January, three people trying to enter the country illegally drowned in the Rio Grande. It happened while Texas & the Biden admin were fighting about security measures.
The Biden admin told the press a lie. The media ran with it, and most never corrected the stories.
The fraudulent story was advanced first by @CBSNews. On January 14, they claimed that the crossers had drowned b/c Texas “physically barred” rescuers trying to help.
The takeaway from CBS was clear: Texas had deliberately killed people, rather than allowing them to be rescued.
Do you remember how bad the media’s “Covid lab leak” - the hypothesis that the virus came from a lab - coverage was?
I thought I did. But it was a more dramatic example of uniform media malpractice than even I remembered.
So I revisited it. Buckle in, it’s long. ⤵️
It started in Feb 2020 when @SenTomCotton suggested looking into the CCP lab studying bats near the initial cases in Wuhan.
The media were outraged. In a since-updated piece, @washingtonpost said the idea was a “conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts.”
It wasn’t just WaPo. Shortly thereafter, @nytimes trotted out a similar allegation, calling the lab leak hypothesis a “fringe theory” and a “tale” designed to inflame social media.
@CNN’s @ChrisCillizza said Cotton was “playing a dangerous game” with his suggestions.
The reason I take screenshots is that I'm always paranoid that an outlet or journalist will scrap the evidence of a bad take. Maybe I should be giving folks more credit for standing by their inaccuracies.
Every so often I check back in on this, perhaps my all-time favorite headline from @NPR, only to see that it still exists in its original form, from April 2020.
I launched a newsletter, called Holden Court, about the media, what they get wrong & why it matters. The goal is to reach beyond what my 🧵s have on Twitter & to build a better recent history of media & media criticism.
You can sign up at the link in my bio. More ⤵️
At that link you can read my launch piece and get a better idea of what it is that I’m trying to do.
The piece also walks through a recent example of bad media coverage that I worry we’re already forgetting about: the start of Covid.
My general premise for the newsletter is that media criticism could be a lot better; more driven by what the media actually does and says and more set in recent context, rather than an impressionistic sense that the media is hopelessly off-track.