The nation has been glued to the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, watching live feeds of courtroom proceedings and flocking to social media to discuss everything from the judge’s quirks to the defendant’s “crocodile tears.”
From the start, the case has divided America, with people sticking to their belief that the Illinois teenager was either a young patriot or a lawless vigilante dispatched to the small Wisconsin city of Kenosha hellbent on havoc.
But over the course of the two-week trial, a third group of people has emerged — people who initially believed the narrative, largely peddled by the media, that Rittenhouse was an unhinged trigger-happy teenager, only to watch the proceedings for themselves and come away with a different opinion.
Rittenhouse, 18, is accused of killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and grievously injuring Gaige Grosskreutz after shooting him in the arm during a night of violent clashes in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020. Prosecutors have painted Rittenhouse as a “tourist” drawn to chaos, while the defense has claimed he feared for his life and shot the men in self-defense.
Ana Kasparian, a host for the liberal outlet The Young Turks, said she wanted to “correct the record” on an assumption she had previously made on Rittenhouse’s self-defense narrative.
KYLE RITTENHOUSE SOBS IN COURT AS HE TAKES STAND
“Initially, I was under the assumption that Rittenhouse was the person who was chasing after Joseph Rosenbaum,” she said on air. “That’s how it had started, but I was wrong about that.”
The Young Turks host followed up her comment by showing a video of Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse before he was fatally shot.
She said “what really mattered” was “what started it all.”
Investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald tweeted: “I never commented on the Rittenhouse case until I started watching large chunks of the trial and all I can say is that anyone who has done the same and denies that there’s a huge gap between the media narrative about this and what actually happened is not telling the truth.”
I never commented on the Rittenhouse case until I started watching large chunks of the trial, and all I can say is that anyone who has done the same and denies that there’s a huge gap between the media narrative about this and what actually happened is not telling the truth.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 10, 2021
Greenwald also unearthed a tweet from someone claiming to be “highly educated and reasonably perceptive” who admitted that “it was only today that [they] learned that Kyle Rittenhouse victims are white.”
If Rittenhouse is convicted of the most serious charges against him — first-degree reckless homicide and first-degree intentional homicide — he could face a lifetime behind bars. Each carries a 60-year sentence. He has also been charged with first-degree recklessly endangering safety, which is punishable by 12 1/2 years in prison. A weapons modifier carries another five years. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
When the riots in Kenosha began, conservative news outlets pushed out photos and videos of gun-toting men and women silhouetted against a burning city. Joan Donovan, the chief of research at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, called it “riot porn,” claiming in MIT Technology Review that the footage was designed to “overwhelm the sense-making capacity” of viewers, as well as to inspire militias and vigilantes to “live out fantasies of taking justice into their own hands.”
Meanwhile, the liberal media slanted its way in by reporting racist thugs had come to Kenosha looking for trouble and mischaracterized much of what was happening in the city. Rittenhouse’s mother, Wendy, has accused President Joe Biden of defaming her son after he tweeted a video suggesting Rittenhouse was a white supremacist.
Legacy media bias also bled into trial coverage after reporters used the “raises questions” blueprint to draw attention to topics they believed carried merit.
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“Rather than reporting on organically occurring stories of interest, journalists will decide that they want a story to exist, and work backwards from there. [The Washington Post] story began with a preexisting conclusion — that Bruce Schroeder, the judge who may well rule leniently in the Rittenhouse case, has a record of leniency that is deserving of scrutiny — rather than reaching it as the result of serious, good-faith investigation,” National Review reporter Nate Hochman wrote.
Calling it a “master class in media bias,” he added: “A reporter will personally decide he or she wants to raise questions about a particular issue, and then proceed to write a story about how the issue ‘raises questions.'”
Some have raised the prospect that Rittenhouse could seek damages for libel if he is acquitted, after numerous figures in the media depicted him as a murderer and white supremacist.
Critics are also slamming the media for not calling prosecutors out on their efforts to paint Rittenhouse as a “tourist.” Rittenhouse’s father, grandmother, aunt, uncle, and one cousin call Kenosha home. The 18-year-old and his mother live across the border in Illinois.
Nonetheless, some who adopted an anti-Rittenhouse stance are still standing strong with their pretrial conclusions and have searched for ways to support it.
Schroeder was slammed this week by multiple media outlets after his cellphone, with the ringtone “God Bless the U.S.A.,” went off in court. The song was routinely played at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies.
Aaron Rupar, a left-leaning journalist, said the ringtone proved the judge’s bias.
“The Rittenhouse judge’s ring tone is literally Trump’s rally theme song,” he tweeted as part of a thread on the proceedings. “Draw your own conclusions.”
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Rittenhouse’s defense team rested its case late Thursday.
On Monday, both sides will present closing statements and have time for rebuttal. The jury is expected to begin deliberations in the afternoon.
