NYT Reporter Had Her Kenosha Riots Piece Delayed Until After Biden's Victory in 2020

The revelation comes in the wake of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal in court. The latter had allegedly agreed to help a local automotive business protect its property from rioters in August 2020.

A former reporter for The New York Times, Nellie Bowles, has shared a story about her article on the destructive consequences of BLM riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, being postponed for publication by the newspaper until after the 2020 election was over.

Bowles claimed that during her time at the newspaper she was sent to Kenosha in order to cover a specific angle that dominated the "mainstream liberal" agenda: "burning down businesses for racial justice was both good and healthy". According to her, the presumption was that all affected businesses were insured and suffered no losses, while the people got the chance to express their "righteous rage" over alleged racial injustice.

Yet, when Bowles arrived in Kenosha it turned out that this viewpoint was far from true.

"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".

Bowles reflected the hardships the local businesses endured during the BLM protests that at times turned into riots in her article and submitted it to the newspaper as usual. Only this time it was not published, at least not immediately.

The journalist admits that sometimes she submitted "bad" articles that were not published at all, but that was not the case with the Kenosha article. According to Bowles, an NYT editor told her that the article wouldn't run in the newspaper until after the 2020 election, citing "space, timing, tweaks here or there". True to their word, The New York Times ran the article when the election was won by Joe Biden and he took over the White House.

"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", Bowles said referring to the Kenosha shooter, who was recently acquitted on charges of killing two protesters, who had chased him down and tried to grab and take away his gun.

Bowles also recalled how another journalist, a top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, had to resign due to publishing an article that suggested the protesters should not be burning down buildings to make their point. She alleged that in that situation the only "acceptable response" by the owners of burnt buildings would be to "watch the fires burn and to say: thank you".

The protests and riots in Kenosha flared up last summer as part of the broader BLM demonstrations in America, but were prompted by a Kenosha police officer shooting African American man Jacob Blake in the back seven times. The latter was sought by law enforcement on third-degree sexual assault charges. The protests resulted in substantial property damage to some local businesses and deaths of several protesters.