During the semester I was completing a journalism minor as part of my law degree, I arrived early to my Feature Writing class and found the room occupied by the lecturer from the previous session. He was a unit coordinator for the journalism program, sitting alone at the front, writing some notes about the class that he had just wrapped up. With my own class yet to arrive, I introduced myself and took the opportunity to pick his brain about the unit.
He immediately asked what had drawn me to journalism. His voice carried that smooth, broadcast-ready accent you’d associate with those big overseas cable networks.
I explained that I wanted to improve my writing skills beyond the rigid legalese required for law subjects, and also because I was curious to understand why the “mainstream media” seemed to report so many important stories so incorrectly.
As an example, I mentioned the Kyle Rittenhouse case, which was breaking at the time. I pointed out that television reports didn’t match the live, unedited footage that was posted on alternative news platforms, and that the news was giving people a completely distorted impression of events.
He stopped me abruptly, not to discuss the case but to correct my terminology.
“We don’t say ‘mainstream media’,” he said. “That term was originally used as a pejorative. The proper industry term is ‘legacy media’.”
It seemed like a strange detail for him to focus on, albeit helpful, because I’d always used these terms interchangeably, but the point I was making seemed more important than industry terminology.
For anyone who doesn’t remember the case, Kyle Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old who shot three people during a night of violence at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020. The unrest had begun two days prior, after police shot a 29 year old Black man, Jacob Blake, seriously injuring him and sparking widespread protests against police violence.
In the immediate aftermath of the Rittenhouse shootings, the American news networks began reporting a narrative that described him as a dangerous troublemaker who had shown up to a volatile protest and opened fire on unarmed civilians—a portrayal that did not reflect the facts. While the Australian media was more restrained in its reporting, it also failed to report the truth.
Early reports erroneously claimed he had “illegally crossed state lines with a firearm”, that he was “looking for trouble”, and that he had “shot three innocent protesters, killing two”. Major networks repeated this depiction for months, often using selectively edited video clips that omitted the moments leading up to each shooting.
As a result, many viewers of television news were given the impression that Rittenhouse was a dangerous vigilante terrorist rather than someone who went there with good intentions to support and protect the community.
In contrast, hours of freely available footage live-streamed on the night presented an entirely different story. That vision documented Rittenhouse moving around Kenosha with others who were there to provide medical assistance and help protect local businesses after previous nights of protest had resulted in widespread arson and property damage.
Commentary also described how the AR-15 rifle Rittenhouse carried had been stored at a friend’s father’s house in Kenosha rather than taken across state lines illegally, and that he had stayed at that friend’s home the night before the protest, before going to work as a lifeguard in the city the following day.
After work, Rittenhouse volunteered to clean graffiti at a school that had been vandalised during the previous night’s protests.
Video evidence showed that prior to the shootings Rittenhouse had provided first aid to injured protesters, and helped extinguish a dumpster fire before it could spread to fuel pumps at a nearby petrol station.
Live-stream also captured his confrontation with Joseph Rosenbaum, a convicted felon and registered sex offender, who had recognised Rittenhouse as the person who had earlier told some of Rosenbaum’s associates to get out of a car they had broken into at a car yard they intended to burn down — a direction they followed only after they realised that Rittenhouse was armed.
Subsequent footage showed an aggressive Rosenbaum pursuing Rittenhouse into a parking lot, rapidly closing distance and shouting abuse as he attempted to grab the rifle before being shot. After Rosenbaum went down, Rittenhouse immediately phoned police to report the account, but as a hostile crowd began to surround him, he was forced to flee, and make his way to a designated police checkpoint to report the incident.
As he ran toward police, he was struck from behind, knocked to the ground, and then attacked by several individuals. Recordings show that he fired only at people who were actively assaulting or threatening him at close range.
The three people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse.
At the time of this discussion, the websites containing the footage I’ve described had been bookmarked, but leading up to the trial, most of those clips were removed from platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter (now X), and Instagram.
My unit coordinator was visibly uncomfortable with my version of events and immediately rejected it, as if it were obvious that what I was describing could not be true.
The narrative delivered by television news had already informed his understanding of events, and ultimately his opinion of Rittenhouse. He simply could not accept an alternative account when its conclusion clashed so utterly with the one he had already formed.
In his view, Rittenhouse was an unruly ratbag who went looking for trouble, ended up shooting three innocent people, and should be punished to the full extent of the law.
I maintained he was essentially a good kid whose actions had been provoked and amounted to self-defence — but the unit coordinator simply could not accept this interpretation.
Months later, at trial, the jury ultimately relied on a version of events more consistent with what I had described than with the misleading legacy media narrative. The trial judge reaffirmed a long standing rule that, because self defence was being argued, the individuals who had been shot could not be referred to as “victims” in his courtroom, and after 26 hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Rittenhouse of all charges.
What is False Context?
And this is not an isolated example, it is a pattern I have observed repeatedly over many years of watching legacy media news coverage of many major events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the Middle East conflict, the climate crisis, the Russia–Ukraine war, and numerous other significant stories. Misrepresenting the facts appears to have become the modus operandi of legacy media.
At that moment my classmates began filing into the room and our conversation came to an abrupt end. As my lecturer walked in, the unit coordinator stood to speak with him, and I offered one final comment.
“It’s a fitting name,” I said. “After all, a legacy is what you leave behind after you’re dead… I’d much rather be mainstream.”
