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 new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.
The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?
But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.
Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.
Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.
But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.
The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.
I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.
Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”
The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.
(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)
It should go without saying, but the media cultivating this type of baseless hysteria about an admin for partisan reasons is much more of a threat to the underpinnings of our democracy than anything Trump has actually done.
Quick 🧵⤵️
A couple quotes:
“If you think that there’s this thing out there called America, and it’s exceptional, that means you don’t have to do anything” to stop fascism.
What? What does that even mean??
That if you, like millions of Americans!, believe in American exceptionalism…you’re a fascist?
Really?
“The powers that be can do whatever they want to you”
Trump can’t even deport people who have deportation orders against them without a federal judge stepping in.
Many in the media are trying to claim that the press was merely duped by Biden’s White House about the former president’s cognitive decline.
That simply isn’t true. The media actively took part in the coverup.
Don’t let them forget. I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️
I’ve done a number of threads on this but putting some of the most egregious stuff in one place.
Perhaps the most damming: Two weeks before the debate made Biden’s cognitive decline inescapable, @washingtonpost gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to allegedly edited videos showing Biden clearly displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype” while quoting the White House to say the videos were “cheap fakes” — all to defend Biden against criticisms about his age and well-being.
That story came four days after a previous effort from @washingtonpost to write off these videos as Republican efforts to mislead voters: proof, the Post claimed, that “the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the waters edge.”
I’m not sure people realize just how egregious some of NPR’s “journalism” has been. Amid the debate about defunding the network, I wanted to walk down memory lane to revisit some of its worst coverage.
There’s a lot. ⤵️
First, perhaps the most egregious display of activist journalism: their response to the Hunter Biden laptop story of corruption involving a major party candidate on the eve of the election.
Not only did @NPR not cover it, they bragged about refusing to do so.
Insofar as @NPR did cover the Hunter Biden scandal, they actively tried to cover it up.
They applauded Facebook & Twitter strangling the story as part of a push against “misinformation and conspiracy theories.”
The story, of course, turned out to be far from invented.