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  • 2016-05-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Sanders Supporters Throw Chairs at Nevada Democratic Convention? (en)
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  • On 14 May 2016, Democrats held a third-tier convention in Nevada, the events of which were, by all accounts, adversarial. Supporters of Bernie Sanders claimed that rules were adjusted and schedules changed without notice, while supporters of Hillary Clinton claimed Sanders supporters were violent and obstreperous and resorted to throwing chairs. Much of the initial reporting came from local journalist Jon Ralston, who live-tweeted events as they occurred at the convention on 14 May 2016. While Ralston didn't report at the time that chairs were being thrown at the convention, he later tweeted that: The chair-throwing claim was repeated across election coverage. In an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz repeated, in concert with video footage of a man holding a chair aloft, the refrain that Sanders supporters had been throwing chairs at the convention: The chair-throwing story was reported as fact not just by MSNBC but by news outlets such as the New York Times, the Associated Press, and CBS. MSNBC's account opened as follows: The Times's article also led with the claim of chairs thrown by violent attendees and included reports of chaos among the ranks of Sanders supporters: Jon Ralston tweeted about the purported chair throwing activity despite having left the convention early, but he didn't initially clarify that he was not an eyewitness to the alleged incident: Subsequent tweets between Ralston and another reporter suggested that Ralston's assertion about chair throwing was, at best, second-hand, as Ralston inquired whether the other reporter had obtained video of the event: As far as we know, no video documenting such claims has yet surfaced, but coverage of the chair-throwing fracas continues unabated. At least one outlet held their own reporting to account when Ralston's came under question. NPR ran with Ralston's second-hand assertion about thrown chairs, but their ombudsman later pegged Ralston (who did not witness the chair-throwing) as the sole source behind the widely-repeated claim and admitted that no evidence had been produced that anyone had thrown chairs: CounterPunch took an even more vitriolic approach to correcting the record: (en)
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