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Comparing the Coverage: Kyle Rittenhouse and the killing of Jennifer Laude How the media challenges white supremacy — but not when it’s themselves

Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two people after entering a Black Lives Matter protest armed with an AR-15, his argument in court veiled in a smokescreen of “self defense.” He pleaded not guilty.

In 2014, a United States Marine named Joseph Scott Pemberton, on a visit to the Philippines, took a woman named Jennifer Laude to a nearby motel after meeting her at a club. Hours later, her body was found dead, murdered by Pemberton who ended her life after discovering she was trans. He is a free man today, living among us in the United States.

These two cases involve white men brutally murdering innocent people and being acquitted of their crimes — with aspects of the US government and justice system aiding their acquittals — after their legal counsel claimed “self defense” to justify their killings. However, only one of these stories was afforded the ability to become a prominent news story covered in the US news cycle. The other instead became another case of violence that white men of our country have created with their own bare hands abroad, swept under the rug with media silence.

This media silence in the U.S. on the killing of Jennifer Laude, despite the logistics of the case being nearly identical to Rittenhouse’s murder of two protesters, can come down to two factors. There’s a lack of citizen journalists in newsrooms during Laude’s death, trial and in modern day that are willing to tackle stories beyond our borders. Further, journalists fear having to challenge or critique their own news organizations they’re housed in whose actions don’t reflect the content they produce — for example, there’s a grave irony in news media outlets calling out white supremacy and privilege in the Rittenhouse trial, yet are also the same media outlets that mimic that white privilege by centering white narratives in their own news cycles.

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On October 11, 2014, Jennifer Laude went to the Ambyanz Bar in Olongapo, Philippines with a friend. The bright neon lights of the nightlife of Olongapo, a spot where US Marines often frequented when stationed overseas, was shadowed by the dim lights of the Celzone Lodge that Laude would ultimately spend her final hours of her life in. Her body, wrapped in just a towel instead of her usual bright mini dresses she wore out, was found slumped over a toilet in the motel bathroom, her long hair immersed in water.

“I choked it from behind,” Pemberton said to another Marine moments after murdering Laude, who the coroner announced had died of asphyxiation. She lost her ability to take in enough oxygen to continue breathing, bruising her neck severely — all by the hands of the United States’ own.

Pemberton, who claimed that he murdered Laude in “self-defense,” would then pursue a trial heavily influenced by the U.S. imperial power over the Philippines. He was protected under the U.S. and Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement, or the VFA, that provided U.S. authorities abroad the ability to “exercise exclusive jurisdiction over United States personnel” in the event they commit a crime overseas. This crime happened the same year that the then President Barack Obama initiated a 10-year pact to increase military personnel presence in the Philippines with the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

Pemberton was ultimately found guilty and initially sentenced to 12 years in prison. Notably, however, due to the VFA and constant collaborations between the U.S. and Philippine government militaries, negotiations were made that allowed Pemberton to serve his sentence in a private military headquarter of the Philippines instead of a public prison.

In 2020, he was released, only serving six years of his sentence due to “good conduct” that the Laude family questioned the validity of given he spent only six years behind bars — if you could even call it that — in a relatively comfortable military base.

Pemberton is now a free man, symbolizing further how the U.S. government will implement their own imperial mechanisms to deter proper justice and the lengths they’d go to protect white men of our nation — even when they murder.

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One citizen journalist in particular shows how to properly report the news in a way that is unafraid to cover the scope of human rights violations, within and beyond borders, no matter who or what power is behind it — even if it’s the dictator that’s running your country where journalists are actively being killed.

Maria Ressa is the co-founder and CEO of Rappler, an online news organization that covers the Philippines and the world. Despite being based in the Philippines, Rappler has still covered US-based criminal cases — even the Rittenhouse trial.

The organization knows, and reports in a way that exemplifies this fact, that human rights violations extend further than the bounds of the country they’re based in — and they also understand their coverage must reflect that.

Rappler is the premier media company that has, and continues to, cover the Laude case from 2014 to today. Recently they’ve created a timeline of events in the last seven years since her death. This reporting has succeeded in producing impactful outcomes: from mobilizing local communities through media reportage in the Philippines in order to demand justice in the courts for Laude to informing allies abroad like myself on what’s happening overseas as no outlets here are giving it the media coverage it deserves.

Ressa’s work, and the reporting that Rappler pursues, also shows that there is a need for citizen journalists in the newsroom today, as she has just been recognized as a monumental figure by receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for her work advancing the state of journalism and the freedom of the press in the Philippines. Proper reporting methods to ensure holistic reportage of human rights beyond a writer’s location is no excuse, because Ressa and Rappler have shown it’s needed, doable and impactful.

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“With the VFA, it's like the Filipinos are being served on a silver platter,” the family of Jennifer Laude’s lawyer, Attorney Virginia Suarez, said in the film Call Her Ganda. “Here are the Philippines, kill them. Here are the Filipinas, rape them. Because even if you are convicted, your custody will be transferred to the U.S. Embassy. It’s like you’re free.”

Attorney Suarez has been outspoken on her critiques of the VFA and the unnecessary ongoing military presence of the U.S. on Philippine soil. Much of this critique comes from the deep histories of flawed jurisprudence in the Philippines. Because although Pemberton was initially found guilty yet released early — freed like another white man, spawned from the U.S. soil, after engaging in murder — the verdict was still a rare occurrence.

“This is the very first time a U.S. soldier was actually incarcerated, convicted,” Attorney Suarez said in an interview with CNN Philippines.

This rarity indicates a severity in this case, exemplifying how important it is to increase the U.S. coverage on cases like this. It’s arguable that although the basic logistics of both the Laude and Rittenhouse trials are the same, the Laude case has so much more corruption — histories, even — from the hands of the U.S. that make this freed state of Pemberton even more severely inhumane and deserving of media attention.

Pemberton’s hands that choked Jennifer Laude to death remind me that the U.S. will forever hold the bodies of the Philippine people in that same chokehold. The lack of coverage of Laude’s case reminds me that the media will not alleviate that chokehold unless it provides them profit, ultimately placing their hands on the necks of the Philippine people unseen in the coverage as a result.

The U.S. media coverage must take note of citizen journalists, like the work that Rappler pursues, and challenge power structures from within newsrooms to the courtrooms across the oceans.

If it weren’t for Rappler, I wouldn’t have known that the Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte momentarily halted the VFA, only to reinstate it this year, the day after Biden’s Defense Secretary met with Duterte and offered more vaccines to the Philippines. Duterte then admitted on record that the vaccines were a guiding factor in his decision to reinstate the VFA.

And yet, the coverage of this in the U.S.? It’s as silent as the bodies murdered by Americans, decayed into the Philippine soil that’s rightfully theirs but dominated by outsiders, their stories never seeing the light and buried in the rubble alongside them because they weren’t profitable enough to be a headline.

But, Jennifer Laude and the 375 trans people killed globally in 2021 alone are headlines to me. The American people deserve to know the role our country played in statistics like these. Journalists needed to cover the U.S. and its incestuous relationship with murder, especially the stories of how they protect murderers abroad.

Jennifer Laude’s family and friends called her “Ganda.” It translates to “beautiful” in Tagalog. Her story is dark, yet her life was bright and full of beauty deserving of a spotlight beyond a spot in a database tracking deaths like hers.