False Media Reporting Leads To Corrections, Mockery

The persistent media falsehood that Kyle Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-15 style rifle when he "crossed state lines" before his deadly encounters in Kenosha, Wis., has led to multiple corrections and considerable mockery as the reckoning over misleading coverage of the trial continues, reports Fox News.

What Insider called "perhaps the most persistent myth" around the case was peddled repeatedly in liberal media outlets, in print and on television, before and even during the trial. It was established through testimony and police records that the rifle Rittenhouse used in the shootings of three people, two fatal, was already stored in Kenosha. Several of his family members lived in Kenosha, and the AR-15 style rifle was bought for Rittenhouse by his friend Dominick Black and stored at his house.

The oft-used media line that he traveled across "state lines" gave off the impression he was an outsider who traveled from afar, when in reality he traveled less than a half hour to Kenosha from his town Antioch, Ill., just south of the state border.

Following Rittenhouse's acquittal on all charges after he claimed self-defense in the case, CBS News correspondent Mark Strassman reported on Sunday's "Face The Nation" that "Rittenhouse drove in from Illinois armed for battle," leading the outlet to issue a correction and apology for its language.

He was hardly alone, though, with dozens of pundits repeating the phrase ad nauseam in the lead-up to and indeed during the case.

Ana Kasparian of the far-left Young Turks blasted Rittenhouse for having "crossed state lines with an illegal gun" earlier this month before correcting herself on a later show, saying it was important to have the "facts."

"The 17-year-old vigilante, arguably a domestic terrorist, picked up a rifle, drove to a different state to shoot people," MSNBC's John Heilemann said last year.

"Not only was he not standing his ground, he wasn’t even standing in his own state," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on Nov. 1. "He crossed state lines with an AR-15, threw himself in the middle of all this and started shooting people."

"In Wisconsin you have Rittenhouse, a White teenager who crossed state lines with an AR-15-style rifle. Killed two men and wounded another and was told by police to go home," left-wing CNN anchor Don Lemon said on Nov. 16.

"Now if you recall, the teenager drove from his home in Illinois across state lines armed with a semiautomatic rifle to the site of the protests where he shot and killed two men and wounded another," MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin said last month

ABC's Joy Behar made two false assertions on Nov. 11, saying Rittenhouse "goes across state lines with an AR-15, with his mother." His mother did not drive him to Wisconsin, an assertion also incorrectly made by CNN's Bakari Sellers. Behar corrected the remark about his mother a few minutes later but not about the rifle.

The examples are nearly endless. "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg, legal analyst Areva Martin, MSNBC's Dean Obeidallah, and MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley also made the false claim.

The day after the verdicts, the New York Times' Glenn Thrush quoted a gun control proponent fretting that Rittenhouse could "grab an assault weapon, travel across state lines" and kill people without consequences.

"Only in America can a 17-year-old grab an assault weapon, travel across state lines, provoke a fight, kill two people and injure another and pay no consequences," he told Thrush, with no text indicating what he said was wrong. Thrush did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would update the piece.

Requests for comment from Fox News Digital to CNN, MSNBC, ABC, Peacock, Gothamist, and writers at Glamour, Esquire, and Deadspin went unreturned.