In 2020, then 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse found himself in a situation he never should have been thrust into. By that, I don’t blame him, but the rampaging mob that decided to chase a teenager in the middle of a riot. They not only knew he was armed, but one of the mob tried to disarm him during the confrontation, making it clear that Rittenhouse had reason to fear for his life. The reporting of that incident was a journalistic tragedy, though, as many people had very strong opinions as to what happened, all while being very wrong about what happened.
And now, NBC News has decided to repeat that mistake by covering, of all things, Rittenhouse getting a spider bite.
I saw that Rittenhouse was in the hospital dealing with the bite, but while I hope he will make a full recovery, I didn’t think of it as particularly newsworthy. The guy got bitten by a nasty spider. It sucks and all, but it just wasn’t something I figured I needed to report on.
NBC News, however, was apparently very bored, which I guess is fine. What isn’t fine is just how they describe things in that tweet.
We know that, for better or worse, there are a lot of people who never do more than read the tweets as they’re presented, and look at what they see. Kyle Rittenhouse, you see, opened fire at a civil rights rally. He didn’t defend himself from a rampaging mob trying to kill him. He didn’t shoot a man who’d already assaulted him once with a deadly weapon (a skateboard) and was trying to do it again. He didn’t shoot a third man who pointed a gun at him following all of this, the only one he didn’t kill.
No, he just shot at some peaceful civil rights rally.
Spare me.
Luckily, NBC News is being dragged over this journalistic abomination.
Hellbound and Down 