In this episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Sam Stone and guest host Sean Noble welcomed back independent video creator and accidental journalist Matt Orfalea for a powerful conversation about censorship, media accuracy, and how critical details are often missing from mainstream coverage of major events.

Orfalea, known for his investigative video work, discussed how his latest piece, The Tyrannical Censorship of Self-Defense, explores the suppression of key footage from the Kyle Rittenhouse case. He explained that much of the publicly broadcast news coverage cut off video clips before crucial moments — such as when Rittenhouse was stomped in the face and struck with a skateboard for a second time — leaving viewers with an incomplete and misleading picture of what happened.

Orfalea noted that several attackers were armed, including at least one with a handgun, but that many mainstream outlets never reported the presence of multiple gunmen that night. He highlighted footage showing muzzle flashes from another shooter that could only be seen when played back at the original 60 frames per second — a detail missed or omitted by outlets like The Washington Post in their “forensic investigation” video.

The conversation touched on how algorithm-driven platforms, such as YouTube, elevated these incomplete reports as “authoritative sources,” further shaping public perception. Stone and Noble both expressed surprise at the number of attackers involved and frustration that critical details were not widely reported.

Orfalea emphasized that accurate, unedited coverage is essential — even when it is graphic or uncomfortable — so the public can fully understand what happened. He argued that censoring or editing out such moments distorts history and undermines informed debate.

Transcript

**Sam Stone: **And on the line with us right now, continuing on, Matt Orfalea. He has been an independent video creator turned accidental journalist. You definitely do not want to miss these segments because I think, Sean, more and more, it is independent people like Matt, who are stepping up and filling in the holes in the coverage we're getting from mainstream media sources.

One of the biggest examples of that, Matt, is the work you've been doing and talking about around the Kyle Rittenhouse case. You have a piece, The Tyrannical Censorship of Self-Defense. Tell us a little bit about what's going on there, because that's another situation that's very graphic, uncomfortable, but really should be seen and understood.

**Matt Orfalea: **Yes, just similarly to the call to how the Charlie Kirk shooting videos are being censored, the attack against Kyle Rittenhouse, on Kyle Rittenhouse, was censored. And that just gave everybody an inaccurate view of what happened. For example, on television news, broadcast television news, they literally would cut the video and pause the video many crucial seconds before a man runs up to a written house and stomps him in the face and another man hits him with a skateboard for the second time.

So clearly you know you're giving people the wrong impression. So so just imagine you know people are hearing the gunshot but they're not seeing Rittenhouse being attacked as they would if they just show the graphic content.

**Sean Noble: **Well, and as I recall, one of the attackers had a handgun.

**Matt Orfalea: **Absolutely oh my goodness and that there's so many details that were left out in fact it could be even even three gunmen actually I counted.

**Sam Stone: **Oh wow I mean So this is here. Sean and I are consumers of every bit of news we can get because this is part of our job too. But neither I didn't know that. Sean, did you?

Sean Noble: I didn't know there were three. I thought it was just the one.

Sam Stone: Yeah.

**Matt Orfalea: **Well, yeah, let me explain. So they cut and I didn't cover this one in because there's so many, I mean, Twitter only gave me, gives you like a 25 max posts for a thread. But I wrote about, and did a thread about this previously and this concerns a Washington Post video. So in the footage, you know, somebody fires a gun before uh... Rosenbaum chases after Rittenhouse and then eventually shot.

The identity of that gunman, it was reported as if oh you hear this many shot so you do as if it was not uh... as if yeah it was not two separate people. But at that time it was known the man Joshua Ziminski had already been arrested and yet, and yet, yeah, I think that big big outlets didn't report this as a separate gunman, not much less identifying that gunman as Joshua Ziminski, who was document a documented rioter that night. You know?

Ok, then after Rittenhouse shoots Rosenbaum, we hear there are several other shots. So he fires four shots and then there's three other shots afterwards from someone else. We know it was from someone else because the we can see muzzle shots behind where Rittenhouse just was you can see three muzzle flashes from behind the cars. So we know its not Ziminski and we know it's not Rittenhouse so its a new gunman. And so Washington Post has the gall to title their video a forensic breakdown, forensic investigation.

And they lit, but their video, so you can only see those muzzle flashes if you play the video at 60 frames a second, which was its native video rate recorded by Drew Hernandez. Which he uploaded a version of on Twitter. But in Washington Post video, didn't bother. I mean, that's pretty crucial stuff. So they did it, they put it in a timeline at the lower frame rate so you couldn't even see the the flash. So it was crazy, like, you know, to call this a forensic investigation. I mean, and to and to mess up the frame rate like that.

And to not even notice that. Not even to report that even if they screwed up the framework rate like some assistant editor or something like for them to not notice in a forensic investigation. Okay. And this was an investigation of course that was promoted to the top of YouTube searches by YouTube's algorithm which promotes what they call authoritative sources.

Sam Stone: I would assume Google as well, it's probably a prime source for Wikipedia's coverage.

**Matt Orfalea: **Yes, absolutely. So that's how I get so in much of the coverage, you you're losing, you know, misrepresented by subtracting three, three gunmen. It's not just one. And of course, that Washington Post video did go on to see.

**Sam Stone: **They won awards on it, right? Like... I think they... But my good... for their coverage.

**Mat Orfalea:**That's Wild. That's just horrible.

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