AP Leaves Facts on the Cutting Room Floor

The Associated Press is at it again. Last month I wrote a critique of an AP fact-checker who clearly didn’t check her facts. There were multiple factual errors in the article, including the central predicate fact that still remains uncorrected. Who checks AP fact-checkers? Who knows. Today’s edition of AP word manipulation can be found here.

The lede is as follows:

Prosecutors in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial may have lost their best chance at convicting the Illinois man of something when the judge threw out a charge that Rittenhouse was a minor in possession of a dangerous weapon.

Judge Schroeder didn’t “throw out” the charge. He dismissed it because the statute did not fit the charge. The defense made a motion to dismiss because the statute states that a gun barrel has to be shorter than 16 inches for it to apply. The rifle Rittenhouse possessed had a barrel exceeding 16 inches. Two plus two still equals four. The prosecution didn’t argue that the barrel was longer than 16 inches, they simply whined.

Judge Schroeder asked the prosecution if they had any evidence that the barrel was under 16 inches. They answered “No.” The “gun charge” never had a chance of surviving. And even had the jury convicted on that count, it would never have survived on appeal. In short, it wasn’t the prosecution’s best chance of conviction – it was in fact its worst.

The article, written yesterday on November 18^th , explains how Rittenhouse shot two men, and wounded another “during police brutality protests.” Not once does it acknowledge that the city was set aflame by rioters or that the total in property damage for several nights of rioting cost over $50,000,000. Not once was the word “riot” used in the article. And, like most of AP’s reporting on the Kenosha “protests” over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the fact that Blake admitted he was armed with a knife, and the police officer who shot him was cleared of wrong-doing — those predicate facts are left on the cutting room floor.

Inconvenient facts.

Like Rittenhouse defending himself from a convicted child rapist, and two other men with long criminal records.

Meh, facts.