On the first anniversary of the January 6th Capitol Riot TVNZ had a reporter broadcasting live from the grounds in front of the Capitol building. She repeated the media myth that six people died in the riot, including a police officer.
The death of the police officer, Brian Sicknick, was reported by the Associated Press, where our mainstream media gets most of its overseas news. The report claimed that the officer was hit in the head by a thrown fire extinguisher.
Democrats used the report in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
But there was a problem. Sicknick died on January 7th. The medical examiner noted the cause of death as a stroke, classifying his death as due to natural causes, which is defined as a death not hastened by an injury. It was unrelated to the previous day’s events, and there was no sign of any trauma. Sicknick was never hit with an extinguisher, and returned safely to his police station, where he said to fellow officers “I feel fine”.
Associated Press later issued a correction. TVNZ should have been aware of that. There are serious credibility questions when such significant and easily verifiable details are so wrong.
The other deaths were Kevin Greeson (overweight with high blood pressure, he had a heart attack medically unrelated to the protest); Roasanne Boy (accidental drug overdose, medically unrelated to the protest); Benjamin Philips (stroke medically unrelated to the protest); and Ashli Babbit, an unarmed Air Force veteran who was shot at point-blank range by a police officer while she climbed through a broken doorway.
How can we trust our news when false information is presented as fact and perpetuated indefinitely?
The Orange Man Bad narrative doesn’t stack up when the only death was an execution by the “good guys”.
Some more deaths happened in the following days. Police officers Jeffrey Smith and Howard Liebengood committed suicide in separate incidents. Was it due to guilt over their actions and realising they were on the wrong side? Within seven months, two more of the 150 police officers at the riot also killed themselves – Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag. Was it pressure to participate in cover-ups? This is the real tragedy.
TVNZ replayed footage of the riot but left out the parts where security guards opened doors to let in protestors, or people later identified as Antifa activists, and FBI agents incited the crowd. Nor was there any mention about the human rights of protestors imprisoned without charge for nearly a year. Take your news with a grain of salt.