Kyle Rittenhouse: The Media's Assault on the Rights of the Accused

By David in TN
Mon, Dec 6, 2021 6:30 pm

"Kyle Rittenhouse: The Media's Assault on the Rights of the Accused" | William L. Anderson

https://mises.org/wire/kyle-rittenhouse-medias-assault-rights-accused#.Ya6XL7BC_38.gmail

You will remember William L. Anderson for his extensive writing on the Duke Lacrosse Hoax at LewRockwell.com. Anderson now writes mainly for the Mises Institute.

[N.S.: Bill Anderson and I both spoke on a panel, along with Ricahrd Spencer and Robert Stacy McCain on the Duke Rape Hoax that was organized by Marcus Epstein for the Robert Taft Club in Arlington, VA on January 29, 2007.] "To the relief of many, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is over and a Kenosha, Wisconsin jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts. While they believed that Rittenhouse acted legally in self-defense, it is clear the vast majority of progressive American mainstream journalists believed him to be a murderer and would accept no other explanation."

"Now it is one thing to believe something but quite another to throw out false information in the hopes that media members can help rig a conviction, and that is what was seen in the coverage of this case, from pretrial, the trial itself, and to the current moment. Furthermore, the progressive mainstream media coverage of this case goes well beyond the simple falsehoods we heard on a regular basis and threatens the fundamental rights of the accused that have been a bedrock of US criminal law since before the founding of the republic."

David in TN: Anderson makes the mistake nearly all so-called "conservative" writers do by calling the left "progressives."

Anderson quotes attorney Scott Greenfield's blog: "As a general proposition, it is a tenet of progressive thought that the end justifies the means, such that the only 'good' outcome is a 'good' outcome, regardless of what it took to get there."

[N.S.: "...that the end justifies the means." As typically used, the phrase is vacuous, misleading, and dumb. To paraphrase the late Robert Spaemann, If the end doesn't justify the means, what does? The problem with racial socialists, is that their ends are evil.] Anderson concludes, "Thus, we have the president [sic] of the United States and the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin calling out jurors for doing what they were charged to do: examine the evidence and reach the best verdict they could. Progressive rhetoric aside, this was no Emmett Till and the mixed-race jury that acquitted Rittenhouse did not engage in race-based jury nullification. Unfortunately, progressive journalists and politicians will not be satisfied until high-profile criminal trials resemble Stalin's Moscow show trials. That may be our future sooner than we might think."

David in TN; As I have said, "progressive" prosecutors will let the guilty go free while prosecuting the innocent.