Re-painting the Scene With Selective Imagery
As predicted, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has zipped through any thoughtful examination of more than 40,000 hours of internal surveillance tapes from the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to offer just enough footage to sustain the conclusion from which he started:
“‘Deadly insurrection.’ Everything about that phrase is a lie,” Carlson said “Very little about Jan. 6 was organized or violent. Surveillance video from inside the Capitol shows mostly peaceful chaos.” He found quieter moments – without sound – of those inside the Capitol strolling through the hallways to claim most of the rioters were peaceful, calling them “sightseers” not “insurrectionists.”
Along the way, Carlson singled out footage of “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley being followed by officers walking behind him and passing a group of several officers without being stopped – something officers have said in testimony that they were trying to get him to leave the building. In any event, Chansley pleaded guilty to criminal charges. And Carlson used images of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke after serious injuries sustained from the mob that day. After playing video showing Sicknick returning to duty after an initial attack, Carlson insisted that Democrats “knew (Sicknick) was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” he said.
Generally, Carlson downplayed violent scenes that we have seen, ignored others, and used video towards proving a thesis that much too much has been made of an attempted insurrection at the Capitol. Carlson used video to claim that images of violent rioters were a propaganda tool used to paint all the rioters as violent when the majority were simply milling about the Capitol.
The presentation persuaded Donald Trump, needless to say, who called for the release of anyone arrested in connection with January 6.
The video we’ve seen before included a lot of violence. A half dozen deaths resulted from the day, 100 injuries to police officers were reported, 1,000 arrests were made, 500 guilty pleas have been filed in federal courts, but Carlson’s edit of previously unavailable tapes, he insisted, showed that was not the story.
Missing the News
If you follow the Tucker Carlson view of propaganda in lieu of journalism, you’d watch video of a long train moving smoothly through the Ohio countryside rather than scenes of a derailment spewing toxic chemicals. Or the plane flying fine before the turbulence broke out.
What made Jan. 6 news was that was a mob of political partisans for Donald Trump who used violence towards stopping the certification of election results that ousted Trump and made Joe Biden the president. Whatever you make of the various investigations – criminal, procedural and civil – that have resulted, they all have focused on violent, malicious attacks on the Congress that put people’s lives at risk.
Perhaps it is just coincidental timing that we have seen court depositions from Tucker Carlson and other Fox personalities as part of the Dominion Voting Machines defamation lawsuit that show that Carlson and others lying on air about claims of election fraud that were behind Jan. 6. Now, we’re supposed to accept Carlson’s independent journalism credentials?
Who’s he kidding?
Re-painting the scene with selective imagery without context, testimony, timestamps, and the rest runs afoul of basic journalistic principles of investigation. This presentation – apparently the first of others building on exclusive access to Capitol tapes – was a patently partisan effort at whitewashing.
It included assertions that omissions in the tapes, rather than evidence, that Carlson claimed somehow showed that federal agents helped to incite whatever violence did occur.
Carlson did say that Capitol Police had reviewed footage used to offer only minor suggestions to blur the details of an interior door for public safety reasons.
Republican congressmen and former White House officials who want to address the record on January 6 have had and continue to have plenty of opportunity to talk with various investigators and prosecutors. Rather than doing so, they have chosen to fight subpoenas and to claim their Fifth Amendment rights to silence.
Pushing an alternate theory of the case through the friendly presentation by Tucker Carlson is simply not believable.
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