Professor Jacobson wrote a spot-on column last week that was published in the New York Post where he rightly excoriated the mainstream press for their slanted coverage of both the Jacob Blake and Kyle Rittenhouse cases from the start and which has continued on during the trial:
Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial for the shooting deaths of two people and the wounding of another is nearing its end, with the jury expected to get the case soon. The shootings took place as riots, arson and looting shook Kenosha after police shot Jacob Blake on August 23, 2020. The violence fed off the nationwide riots and looting that followed the May death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.From the start, the media misrepresented the [Jacob] Blake case and ensuing riots. They portrayed Blake as an unarmed man who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, subjected to police brutality due to racism.The truth was far different.[…]It’s happening again with the Rittenhouse case, which was born in the Kenosha riots. From the media coverage leading up to the trial, one would think Rittenhouse was a white supremacist militia member who traveled to Kenosha to shoot up peaceful protesters.[…]With trial evidence inconsistent with the news’ narrative, there could have been a major media mea culpa. Instead, headlines and framing continue that pre-trial narrative, even if inconvenient facts appear deep down in the articles. As the editors who run these stories and draft the headlines know, many if not most people don’t get far beyond the headlines and opening paragraphs.
As a former liberal who used to buy what the media reported without much if any questioning as to whether or not what they were reporting was accurate or biased, and as a conservative who gets messages from non-political junkie friends almost every day asking me if I’ve seen this headline or that, I can confirm just from my own experiences that this is the mindset for many people who are misinformed.
For various reasons, whether they’re too busy to scan down into the meat of an article or beyond the headline/edited video clip they see on Twitter, or are just too lazy to do so, a substantial number of Americans are being spoonfed heaping doses of fake or half-baked news on a weekly basis and most don’t know it, and oftentimes deliberately so on the part of the media – with the Rittenhouse case being a prime example of this.
The same day Professor Jacobson’s column was published, liberal investor Bill Ackman, who has nearly 350,000 followers on Twitter, wrote a lengthy thread explaining how his and his wife Neri’s opinions on Kyle Rittenhouse had changed directly as a result of being able to watch the trial on TV. In the thread, Ackman directly pointed the finger at the media’s slanted coverage as the reason why his and his wife’s perceptions about Rittenhouse were so off:
He followed up a few hours later by noting a member of the media actually contacted him to find out if his Twitter account had been hacked because of what he wrote about his reassessment of the particulars of the Rittenhouse case:
Ackman wasn’t the only one. Self-described progressive Sarah Beth Burwick also took to the Twitter machine last week and noted that the “progressive bubble” she was in made the Rittenhouse case out to be something that it’s not:
Burwick, who is now being openly harassed on Twitter by “tolerant” leftists for speaking her opinion, has the “#HowTheLeftIsLosingMe” in her Twitter bio. That’s proof enough for me that she’s a liberal currently getting mugged by reality, not just on the Rittenhouse case but on a lot of other issues. It’s a heady feeling and one that I can attest to from my own conversion from liberalism to conservatism some time ago (we won’t get into the actual number of years or I would severely date myself 😉 ).
In any event, kudos to both of them and any other liberal who is waking up to the actual facts of the Rittenhouse case and not just the spin and biased “reporting” we’re constantly being subjected to by supposedly “objective” reporters with obvious agendas.
Sadly, the Rittenhouse case won’t be the last time we see this kind of overt bias on display by the MSM, but fortunately – as we’ve seen just from the two people above – people’s minds can still be changed if they’re willing to listen to the facts and be open-minded. That doesn’t mean they have to become card-carrying, rock-ribbed, red-meat conservatives in the aftermath, but anytime you have anyone willing to turn their backs on destructive media narratives after being hit with a reality check is a good thing, regardless of their political leanings.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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