A former New York Times journalist has claimed the paper deliberately held back a story that condemned Kenosha rioters until after the 2020 election, and that she and other journalists were 'meant to ignore the reality of what brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets'.
Nellie Bowles, who recently quit the Times and now works with fellow, disillusioned former Times reporter Bari Weiss, made the claim in her newsletter on Weiss's Substack channel, Common Sense.
Bowles revealed that after the August 2020 riots, she went to Kenosha to speak to the owners of small local businesses that had been razed by rioters between August 23 and August 28, after Jacob Blake's shooting.
She found in her reporting that the rioters were indiscriminate in who they targeted, often going after businesses and properties in the poorer parts of town. She focused on the fact that those smaller business owners had a harder time claiming back portions of their money from insurance, and that the riots left them down and out.
She submitted the story but was told 'the Times wouldn’t be able to run my Kenosha insurance debacle piece until after the 2020 election.'
'There were a variety of reasons given—space, timing, tweaks here or there. Eventually the election passed. Biden was in the White House. And my Kenosha story ran,' she wrote.
It ended up running until November 9, almost a week after the election and nearly four months after the Kenosha riots.
August 24, 2020: Rioters set fire to buildings across Kenosha, destroying over 100 businesses and causing $50million in damage, between August 24 and August 28 after Jacob Blake was shot by a white cop
The rioting in Kenosha started on August 23, two days before Rittenhouse fired his AR-15, and ended eventually when thousands of National Guard troops were brought in. The damage was done by rioters and looters who came under the guise of protesting the Jacob Blake shooting
Bowles was told her story - which recounted how the riots had destroyed the lives of local business owners - wouldn't run until after the election. It ran six days after polls closed
Bowles concedes that she does not know for certain why the Times held it back, but says the decision fits with the wider reality that the media ignored the anarchy in Kenosha that drove Rittenhouse into the street with his gun.
'Whatever the reason for holding the piece, covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority. The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore.
'The old man who tried to put out a blaze at a Kenosha store. The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer in June 2020 amid staff outcry for publishing a piece with the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.”
'If you lived in those neighborhoods on fire, you were not supposed to get an extinguisher. The proper response — the only acceptable response — was to see the brick and mortar torn down, to watch the fires burn and to say: thank you,' she wrote.
Before he was elected, Biden had referred to
