There is perhaps no greater example of the polarization of American media than the coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who this week allegedly shot and killed two Protestants and another wounded at Kenosha.
On one side of the divorce, Fox News host Tucker Carlson defended Rittenhouse on Wednesday over violence and damage to property in Kenosha. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with guns decided they had to keep order like no one else would?” asked Carlson.
Carlson’s statement in a statement on Thursday responded to Daily Show host Trevor Noah: “Nobody drives guns to a city because they love someone else’s business so much.” He continued: “They do it because they hope to shoot someone. That’s the only reason people like him join these gangs in the first place – yes, I said it, a gang – because this is not the “Battle of Yorktown, it’s a bunch of dudes threatening people with guns.”
Rittenhouse is now accused of first-degree premeditated murder, but it has not stopped some experts and journalists from humanizing him, and even calling him to become president. How Rittenhouse is now portrayed will tell – not least because Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man who was shot by police in Kenosha days before Rittenhouse’s arrest, paralyzed his waist to the bottom, has not yet stood trial – but has already been branded a criminal in the media. .
In the words of one Chicago journalist: “[This is] a rare moment in the news media where we really get to see this dichotomy … To see who the news media are most sympathetic to and pay attention to when telling their stories. ”
Some will say that it is too early to use words like “terrorism”, to describe the events before evidence is examined. Others will point out that the term is not always applied consistently: both the media and the FBI are quick to label people of color who commit violent extremism as “terrorists.” Donald Trump even this year referred to people protesting against police violence, but decided to refer to armed white neighborhood agents patrolling the capital of Michigan as “very good people.”
Here’s how the American media coverage Rittenhouse has described so far.
‘A volunteer’
This morning, the tabloid New York Post described how Rittenhouse was seen for cleaning up graffiti in Kenosha hours before his arrest. The article shows a photo of Rittenhouse scrubbing walls in Wisconsin with other high school kids volunteering next to the Kenosha courthouse.
‘A guard’
How quickly one should be identified as a terrorist is a subject of enormous debate – but one thing that Muslim extremists rarely, if ever, are mentioned in the American media is a guard.
But many outlets, including the Guardian, have referred to Rittenhouse as a guard – a word commonly used to describe an unauthorized person who takes it upon themselves to protect their community in the absence of legal authorities who do that. Rittenhouse, who was spotted in the front row of a Trump rally, has been described in the Intercept as a “conservative vigilante.” In a piece that profiles Anthony Huber, one of the protesters killed by Rittenhouse, the New York Post calls Rittenhouse a firearm.
An ‘ardent supporter of the police’
The tools used to radicalize terrorists – such as social media, propaganda and training – often come under control following an extremist or violent attack.
In the case of Rittenhouse, many of the press, including the Guardian, described him as an “ardent supporter of the police” who was “interested in legal action”.
One Washington Post article highlights Rittenhouse’s upbringing in a Chicago suburb, lawfully enforcing and filling his social media with messages from Blue Lives Matter, and how he was once a police cadet who served in the Navy Corps to come.
‘Keeping the peace’
It’s hard to find an article that refers to Rittenhouse’s alleged actions on the right-wing news outlet Fox News. Coverage of the shooting received on its website similar coverage to a Protestant who set a police station on fire and a piece of ridiculous CNN report of the unrest in Kenosha.
But one of the few pieces on Fox’s front page about Rittenhouse is embedded in an interview between Tucker Carlson and a Daily Caller journalist who interviewed Rittenhouse before the alleged shootings took place.
In the video, the journalist refers to how Rittenhouse tried to “maintain peace” in the absence of police, protecting a company that was on fire and how he would be chased and shouted at during the protests.
‘In terrorist’
Domestic terrorism is defined by the FBI as “the illegal use, as an endangered use, of violence by a group as an individual based and fully operated in the United States (or its territories) without foreign direct action against persons or property to intimidate. or force government, the civilian population, as any segment thereof, to pursue political or social goals ”.
A 17-year-old white supremacist domestic terrorist rode across state lines, armed with an AR 15.
He shot and killed 2 people who had gathered to affirm the value, dignity and worth of black life.
Fix your damn headlines.
– Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) August 27, 2020
Publications tend to call Rittenhouse not a terrorist (Esquire called his alleged attack “an act of what could only be called terrorist tourism”), but on Wednesday, representative Ayanna Presley did. She described Rittenhouse as a “domestic terrorist [who] council on state lines, armed with an AR-15. ”
