I mean, it’s not like it’s hard to isolate it from the bodycam footage. Here she is, seemingly less than a second away from plunging it into another girl’s chest.

Nicholas Fondacaro of the Media Research Center made a nice catch with this NBC News report on the shooting last night. Instead of just freeze-framing the knife to show viewers that Bryant was attacking, NBC attributed the claim to police: Police say that Bryant had a knife in her hand and a knife was found next to her after she fell. That leaves the viewer with a bit of unwarranted doubt about what Bryant was doing when she lunged at the girl in pink in the clip. Was she maybe just throwing a punch, and the knife fell out of her back pocket after she was shot?

Well, no. But you’d be forgiven for wondering if you’re an NBC viewer.

Fondacaro also points out that NBC didn’t play the part of the 911 call where the caller clearly says that Bryant is trying to stab people. Watch, then read on.

In their report on the officer-involved shooting in Columbus, Ohio, NBC Nightly News deceptively edited the 911 call to leave out the part where the caller says a girl was "trying to stab us." They also don't show viewers the knife in the attacker's hand just before the shots. pic.twitter.com/r5uXD1qDb1

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 22, 2021

The omissions are made more conspicuous by the fact that CBS and ABC did highlight the knife in her hand and the key part of the 911 call, to their credit.

NBC isn’t the only media outlet having a curiously difficult time stating what happened here even though it couldn’t be clearer from the footage:

I mean, this is not untrue, but it might be helpful to note that she appeared to be literally trying to stab someone with it when she was shot, and was not merely “holding it” pic.twitter.com/U0krBhHLq9

— Leon Wolf (@LeonHWolf) April 22, 2021

Fox News flagged two more examples of reporting yesterday that were … incomplete, shall we say. Watch the brief news summaries below from HuffPost and AJ+ and note what’s missing. Again, despite the bodycam footage being public, neither shows the knife in Bryant’s hand. HuffPost merely says that a knife was seen “falling” after Bryan was shot whereas AJ+ resorts to the same “police say” framing that NBC did. And naturally both emphasize Bryant’s race and the fact that she was killed shortly before the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, part of the effort by activists to paint Bryant’s death as another case of police using violence unlawfully against an African-American suspect.

I’ll leave you with this op-ed from a law professor at Ohio State who cites the Bryant case as another reason why the police should be “abolished,” without even a glancing attempt to engage the shooting on the facts. There really does seem to be a pro-stabbing contingent on the left.

Police in Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed a Black girl around the same time the guilty verdict was read in the Derek Chauvin trial. pic.twitter.com/w1PHfsKrrG

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) April 21, 2021

Hours after Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, police in Columbus, Ohio, killed a 16-year-old Black girl. pic.twitter.com/iFgc1Y1tBZ

— AJ+ (@ajplus) April 21, 2021