Officer Sicknick’s death: the only surprise here is that the NY Times actually issued any sort of retraction at all, even a mild one

 I’ve been writing about the problems with the story about Capitol Police Officer Sicknick’s cause of death since just a few days after it happened. It was clear even then that the report that Officer Sicknick had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher wielded by rioters and that he died of that injury was shaky from the start, and was contradicted by his family members who had spoken to him after the riot. These difficulties with the reporting could have been easily perceived weeks ago by anyone with a computer and a spirit of curiosity (and see this for a list of links to my posts about it).

But the NY Times couldn’t bother to report on any of this, because there was an anti-Trump narrative to get out and an impeachment to be effected.

Now that the preferred narrative is firmly set in the public’s minds and the impeachment trial is over, the fact that nearly every newspaper in the US and the House managers lied to the nation about Sicknick’s death can be whispered or at least hinted at. Here the “update”, and it’s pretty subtle. Most of America will probably miss the correction, because it’s attached to the original January 8 article that first reported on the fire extinguisher story told by “officials,” and the headline is still intact, “Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.”

How did Sicknick die?  We can't be sure, but we can be sure that the story the NY Times told and the story that the House Impeachment managers told was a lie.