How social media has changed coverage of the Charlie Kirk murder case

It is difficult to imagine how much the media environment – ​​particularly the social media environment – ​​has changed the reporting and public understanding of major legal cases over the past 30 years. The case of Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer, Tyler Robinson, is a striking example.

In 1993, I led the terrorism prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman (“the Blind Sheikh”) and members of his jihadist cell. They had bombed the World Trade Center and then planned what they expected would be simultaneous bombings of New York City landmarks – the UN complex, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and the FBI headquarters in Lower Manhattan. Abdel Rahman himself was particularly interested in attacks against US military facilities.

Of course some Conspiracy theories were peddled with our case. Maybe it was an FBI inside job – an excuse to harass Muslims. Or perhaps Saddam Hussein’s regime had orchestrated it. Perhaps the Egyptian secret services were involved. Or – because no conspiracy theory would be complete without this – maybe it was the Mossad!

The difference between then and now? There was no social media.

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Fox Newswith the emphasis on reporting Instead of proselytizing, he was a young challenger to the left-wing bias of the established media. But this media environment still fit the tradition that had grown over decades: a handful of television news departments and the major print press—the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

The result? Conspiracy theories have had a hard time gaining traction. There was not a 24/7 instantaneous flow of information from millions of people, most of whom had no reliable sources. There were no isolated Internet communities to which people with special, eccentric interests were drawn – cauldrons of conspiracy theory. There was no SMS – and even email services were still developing. No X/Twitter, no Facebook, no TikTok or Blue Sky. It was a different society.

In practice that meant ours Federal Courthouse in Manhattan was the focus. If you wanted to know what developments had taken place in a criminal investigation – if you wanted to know who the suspects were, what the evidence was against them, what the legal issues might be in dispute – you had to rely on the public record of the case and the pretrial proceedings.

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That has been turned on its head today.

Kirk was killed by gunfire on September 10th Utah Valley University. A few days later, Robinson was arrested after turning himself in. As is often the case, the arrest led to a flood of official information about the investigation and the issue.

In fact, more information was released than usual, probably for two reasons. First, so much misinformation had been spread after the shooting that authorities felt it necessary to take expansive action to give the public confidence that the case was sound. Second, Kirk’s murder is a state criminal prosecution. The Utah County District Attorney’s Office is not as comfortable with the national spotlight as federal authorities; They went out of their way to show that the case was in good hands.

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Nevertheless, after this initial outbreak of evidence details, official sources remained obscure. This, of course, upset the press – thanks to the new media landscape, there are a lot more of them today than in the 1990s. Still, it’s not that surprising.

That is a Capital murder case. American judges at the state and federal levels are typically graduates of elite, progressive law schools in the United States. They are often hostile to the death penalty (it is one of the major discrepancies between elite and public opinion in our country). Prosecutors and police are aware that capital cases are examined more carefully than ordinary prosecutions. If officials are suspected of leaking information or interfering with Robinson’s fair trial rights, the death penalty and possibly even the case as a whole could be at risk.

As the press presses the court for more disclosure, we are witnessing a worrying phenomenon of the information age.

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Like anything else, information hates a vacuum. When our curiosity in high-profile cases is not satisfied by a steady stream of solid information from law enforcement, defense attorneys, and the courts, the void will inevitably be filled by social media speculation, conspiracy theories, and hateful political rhetoric.

I’m sure that’s why Kirk’s widow Erika was driven there Disprove the crazy talk in a move interview led by Fox News’ Harris Faulkner. The conspiracy theory about her husband’s death would have seemed completely bizarre in September, after prosecutors described the mountain of evidence supporting the charges against Robinson. But while nothing appeared to happen in the formal legal process, the crazy and often offensive comments were given three months to fester. Understandably, Ms. Kirk felt compelled to respond.

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Hopefully the harmful chatter has a short shelf life. A standard preliminary hearing was held in court on Thursday to discuss the issue of media access.

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Consequently, a so-called “preliminary hearing” is planned for mid-January. In many states and under federal law based on U.S. constitutional mandates, prosecutors must seek an indictment by a grand jury; This requires proof of probable cause for the charge sufficient to allow the matter to be referred for trial. However, in Utah, the state generally proceeds through a preliminary hearing: the showing of probable cause must occur before the court, not the grand jury.

As a result, in 2026 we will likely see and hear a lot more information – authoritative information that can be proven in court – about Kirk’s murder. In the ’90s, that was pretty much all we had. In this day and age of competing with the noise of social media, reliable information is what we need to make sense of a very significant prosecution.

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