Does that meet the standard for being an unverified conspiracy theory? It seems that the story came from a source they were keeping anonymous (fairly conventional in journalism, especially when reporting things in real time) and was promptly updated as more news came in.
It's worth noting that there is fairly extensive video of an unhelmeted officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher thrown during a brawl. I don't know if that officer has been identified as Sicknick or not, but that particular event (an officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher) did happen. Separately, we know Sicknick did physically engage with the rioters, as the official US Capitol Police statement cited in the article you linked said "Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty."
So, _a_ fire extinguisher attack did happen (among many other attacks on officers during the riot). An officer did die as a result of injuries sustained during the riot. An anonymous source linked those two events, a link which now appears to have been incorrect. News sites which covered the events in question have effectively released retractions and calls to wait for more evidence.
What more would you want them to do? They can only report on the facts as known at the time, and release updates if those later change. Both of those things were done.
This is an entirely different situation from Fox and OANN alleging massive conspiracies and voter fraud and continuing to hold that position for political reasons despite a lack of evidence.
The update clearly shows that a “fact” was not reported and what was reported was a rumor that could not be verified because it was in no way ever true. I’d expect sober reporting to stick to assertions with real documentation or multiple unrelated attestations of direct knowledge. I’d also expect that a news outlet would treat assertions made by police or any organization as objectively often false and always self-interested. As it stands it is all click-bait manure and the retractions are just legal CYA.
There is plenty of evidence of voting irregularities. An irregularity only becomes fraud when it was done with criminal intent.
The overarching issue with normalization of censorship is that it becomes difficult to tell when evidence does not exist and when it does exist but was censored.
Mediabiasfactcheck.com Claims that hereistheevidence.com is "low quality", because it links to "low quality" sources. But Mediabiasfactcheck has links to those same sources, so by it's own argument Mediabiasfactcheck is "low quality".
Please don't take the above argument too seriously, my point is that so many of the fact check orgs are riddled with logical fallacies. In this case we have guilt by association, ad hominem, argument from authority, and appeal to motive.
I think a fact check system that did not rely on logical fallacy would be quite useful, however I have yet to find one.
You’ll be hard pressed to find a media organization that actually bothered to investigate things instead of immediately claiming Trump’s allegations were false.
Personally, I think that’s the primary reason the riot happened.
It's worth noting that there is fairly extensive video of an unhelmeted officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher thrown during a brawl. I don't know if that officer has been identified as Sicknick or not, but that particular event (an officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher) did happen. Separately, we know Sicknick did physically engage with the rioters, as the official US Capitol Police statement cited in the article you linked said "Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty."
So, _a_ fire extinguisher attack did happen (among many other attacks on officers during the riot). An officer did die as a result of injuries sustained during the riot. An anonymous source linked those two events, a link which now appears to have been incorrect. News sites which covered the events in question have effectively released retractions and calls to wait for more evidence.
What more would you want them to do? They can only report on the facts as known at the time, and release updates if those later change. Both of those things were done.
This is an entirely different situation from Fox and OANN alleging massive conspiracies and voter fraud and continuing to hold that position for political reasons despite a lack of evidence.