Kyle Rittenhouse shot three black men. Kyle Rittenhouse traveled across state lines with a gun. Kyle Rittenhouse had an AK-47.
These are three examples of false information being spread about Rittenhouse, whose trial ended last week with his acquittal.
Prominent influencers, including lawmakers and reporters, are the sources of the some of the misinformation, troubling experts.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, reporter Mark Strassman falsely said Rittenhouse “drove in from Illinois armed for battle.” On CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” on Friday, Harvard University professor Cornell William Brooks falsely said Rittenhouse was carrying an AK-47. The Independent falsely reported late last week that Rittenhouse shot three black men.
Rittenhouse, 17 years old at the time, shot three men, two fatally, with an AR-15 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020. All were white, as is Rittenhouse. The gun was bought by a friend and was picked up by the teenager, who resided in Illinois, from a home in Kenosha.
Rittenhouse claimed self-defense and the jury agreed, clearing him of all charges after video footage and witness testimony during the trial showed he was attacked by all of the men he shot.
“As soon as the Rittenhouse situation happened in Kenosha, the establishment media immediately created a narrative that would work with their particular, preferred narrative. As we now know, that led to a good many mischaracterizations and errors at that time,” Jeffrey McCall, a communications professor at DePauw University, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“By now, those media outlets are so committed to that narrative that they can’t drag themselves to correct previous errors or provide accurate details today. This not only reflects that some media outlets work with predetermined, ideological narratives, but that they are also too lazy to report facts as provided in the actual trial,” he added.
Ryan Chittum, a former journalist and media critic with the Columbia Journalism Review, said that some of the legacy news outlets have done excellent journalism on the Rittenhouse case, including the New Yorker, “but it’s been like a few drops in a firehouse of tendentious, false, and often malicious press coverage intended to fit an ideological narrative.”
“On balance, the press has been a destructive force on this story, from its beginnings in the coverage of the Jacob Blake shooting that set the whole thing off and which we know was justified, to the downplaying of the $50 million in destruction done by rioters in Kenosha, to the libelous portrayal of Rittenhouse and the particulars of what happened,” he told The Epoch Times in a Twitter message. “There have been innumerable journalistic disasters in the Trump era, but this is the most blatantly reckless one of them all.”
Rittenhouse shot the men during riots that followed a police officer shooting Jacob Blake in the same city.
Blake was armed with a knife. Video footage showed he resisted arrest after visiting the home of an ex-girlfriend who had previously accused him of sexual assault. Prosecutors decided not to charge the officer in January because he appeared to act in self-defense and the Department of Justice last month announced it was closing a probe and filing no charges. The sexual assault charge was dropped last year.
Blake survived the shooting, though he is partially paralyzed. Some people falsely said last week that he died, including ESPN’s Jalen Rose.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, claimed Blake died and that he was unarmed.
The committee later sent out an updated statement. “Apologies,” Chris Hayden, its communication director, wrote on Twitter.
The Maloney statement stood out to Jeffrey Blevins, a professor in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Journalism who is working on a book about how misinformation is spread.
“I think a lot of times the political left tend to think that false information, fake news, misinformation, is something that is only attributable to the political right. And that’s just simply not the case,” Blevins told The Epoch Times.
While people with small followings may put forth misinformation, much more damage is done when higher-profile influencers such as lawmakers do.
“When we think about influencers—and politicians fit into this category, certainly the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—their official account would be seen as a credible source,” he said. “When they put something out like this, it tends to stick with people’s minds.”
The false claims have had the potential to reach millions of people on Twitter, where they were spread far and wide. The ESPN, CBS, and CNN shows combined have millions of viewers.
