How the American media outlets that helped create January sixth have covered the insurrection in the year since

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"Joe Biden is pretending to be the president-elect," declared broadcaster Greg Kelly, host of Greg Kelley Reports on the American conservative media TV network Newsmax, on November 12, 2020. 

"Trump won the election. He'll win the recount. He'll win in court" One America News anchor Christina Bobb forcefully asserted to her viewers on November 14.

Lies like these, chiefly espoused by Fox News, One America News, and Newsmax, became entrenched in the minds of millions in the days and months after last year's US President Election on November 3, fuelling the angry segment of the American population to take back their country and take matters into their own hands. 

And they did. Based on the demonstrably false lie orchestrated by right-wing media, certain members of Congress, and President Trump's inner circle, thousands of terrorists descended upon the nation's capital and staged an insurrection to overthrow a democratically elected government of the United States. 

If you don't know what happened, click here for the full story.

The insurrectionists failed. After hours of occupying the seat of the nation's power, the national guard and law enforcement agencies from multiple levels of government secured the Capitol building and made way for lawmakers to certify then-President-Elect Biden's ascendance to the Oval Office.

The vast majority of media reported the January 6 Insurrection as what it was - an insurrection, and have maintained that journalistic approach in the year since it happened. 

Since the attack, those special trio of media outlets — Fox, OAN, and Newsmax — had a different take on the insurrection: it wasn't all that bad.

They rewrote history on live TV, outwardly denying or falsifying details of the seditious events that took place and the intent behind them. Hosts downplayed the attacks as nothing more than an overexcited crowd, whose actions didn't amount to the term "insurrection", and consistently mocked others' reactions to the attack, attempting to delegitimize investigations into it. 

Fox, OAN, and Newsmax continued to spread lies about the insurrection all throughout 2021, and did the same thing on the attack's first anniversary. 

On January 3, 2022, nearly a year later, Fox's Tucker Carlson, announced “…it wasn’t an insurrection. It was a lot of things.” He then continued to emphasize “It was not an insurrection. No evidence of that.”

Grant Stinchfield of Newsmax’s said today, “I refuse to call January sixth an insurrection. I don’t even call it a riot.” During this segment, the onscreen banner read “BIDEN’S ENTIRE PRESIDENCY IS A LIE.

The way in which these media outlets portray January 6 and the 2020 presidential election have a massive misinformative impact on public opinion. 

In an Axios-Momentive poll from Thursday, only 55 per cent of Americans believe that Biden legitimately won the election, and according to another poll from the Associated Press, 61 per cent of Republicans believe that the attacks were either not violent at all, or only somewhat violent.

This contrasts massively with the Democrats’ understanding of the event, in which 87 per cent said the event was extremely or very violent.

For reference, 94 per cent of Fox News’ viewers are either Republicans or Republican leaning. OAN and Newsmax have similar demographics.

This polarizing partisan divide has created two completely different versions of the sixth’s events, both in media records of the day and its aftermath, as well as in people’s memories. A sizeable portion of the American population sincerely believes in a demonstrably false notion that their current President illegitimately rose to the Oval Office.

“While citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility and respect for the rule of law,” former President Jimmy Carter wrote in a recent New York Times opinion column. With the rise of the extremely skewed and false narratives spun by some media outlets, these fundamental ideals seem to be loosing their grip on everyday citizens.