A New York Times story about the Kenosha riot and what brought Kyle Rittenhouse to the restless city armed with a long rifle was held until after the 2020 election, former reporter for the outlet Nellie Bowles said.
During that time, Bowles had been reporting on the racial justice riots following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August. She said that she filed her story, but the editors told her it would not publish until after the election, according to a Thursday post on partner Bari Weiss’ Substack.
Bowles’ piece was later published after Joe Biden won the presidential election.
The reason for holding her story wasn’t made clear to her, but it appeared that “covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority,” she said. “The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore.”
Bowles said in the post that she was sent there to report on “the mainstream liberal movement” and the vandalism going on during the riots.
“Until quite recently, the mainstream liberal argument was that burning down businesses for racial justice was both good and healthy,” Bowles wrote. “Burnings allowed for the expression of righteous rage, and the businesses all had insurance to rebuild.”
She continued. “When I was at the New York Times, I went to Kenosha to see about this, and it turned out to be not true. The part of Kenosha that people burned in the riots was the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots. It was very sad to see and to hear from people who had suffered. Beyond the financial loss, small storefronts are quite meaningful to their owners and communities, which continuously baffles the Zoom-class.”
The civil unrest in Kenosha lasted four days, from Aug. 23-Aug. 26, resulting in $2 million in city-owned property and an estimated $50 million Kenosha area businesses. Two protesters were fatally shot and a third was injured by 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who was charged with first-degree intentional homicide. On Nov. 19, he was found not guilty on all charges.
