Once more with feeling! Media coverage of the Rittenhouse case was hot garbage

We covered this territory during the trial but now that it’s over it’s worth remembering that the media’s coverage of this case was terrible from the moment it happened. Today, Drew Holden put together a thread hitting some of the lowlights:

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Joy Reid was, of course, among the worst offenders:

The fact-checkers got in on it too. This Politifact piece (screenshot above) claiming Trump was wrong because he didn’t accurately describe the entire incident also does not accurately describe the incident:

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Raise your hand if your shocked that Yamiche Alcindor jumped on this bandwagon:

And Aaron Blake:

All the usual suspects:

And of course Joe Biden:

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And noted white supremacy expert Jennifer Rubin offered insights:

And Max Boot:

So if you’re wondering how the near-universal, misinformed impression that Rittenhouse was definitely guilty and had no chance of being acquitted spread, there you have it. It didn’t just happen. It was intentionally pushed out by host of left-wing hacks. And while they kept that up, almost no one in the mainstream press pushed back to suggest there might be more to the story. It wasn’t until this month that some of these legal experts began acknowledging Rittenhouse had a viable case for self defense.

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Over at her Substack site, Bari Weiss points out that until very recently, most people probably believe a lot of lies about this case.

Unless you’re a regular reader of independent reporting — Jacob Siegel of Tablet Magazine and Jesse Singal stand out for being ahead of the pack (and pilloried, like clockwork, for not going along with the herd) — you would have been served a pack of lies about what happened during those terrible days in Kenosha. And you would have been shocked over the past two weeks as the trial unfolded in Wisconsin as every core claim was undermined by the evidence of what actually happened that night.

This wasn’t a disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts. It was one pushed by the mainstream media and sitting members of Congress for the sake of an expedient political narrative…

To acknowledge the facts of what happened that night is not political. It is simply to acknowledge reality. It is to say that facts are still facts and that lies are lies. It is to insist that mob justice is not justice. It is to say that media consensus is not the equivalent of due process. And that pretending otherwise for the sake of political expediency is why the National Guard is now standing watch in Kenosha, bracing for violence once again in the anticipation of a verdict that for many, has already been decided.

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We’ve said it all before. In fact, people on the right have said it for decades now. The media’s liberal bias is not serving the country well. You can’t load the country up with a bunch of politicized falsehoods about a hot button shooting and then act shocked when people are angry and dismayed because the outcome of these cases don’t meet their expectations. How many times will the professional left be allowed to do this before we start to take a closer, more skeptical look at claims they are making and a less skeptical look at claims to the contrary?

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 04, 2024
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