ABC News Just Buried a Wisconsin Cop’s Stabbing to Protect a Suspect’s Image

ABC News buried a Madison police officer's stab wound near the end of a two-minute report.

CBS and NBC named the knife in their opening lines while ABC saved it for last.

What ABC's correspondent said next about that knife explains exactly why he waited so long.

Pierre Thomas Waits 103 Seconds to Mention the Knife

A Madison officer was stabbed Wednesday while trying to arrest a man caught prowling parked cars.

Corey Ruiz, 38, was taken to a hospital after the shooting and died there.

ABC World News Tonight anchor Linsey Davis opened with "growing outrage" over the shooting, without once mentioning that an officer had been hurt.

Correspondent Pierre Thomas then spent a minute and forty-three seconds walking through video before he mentioned the officer's injury at all.

Even then, Thomas buried it inside a sentence built to protect the suspect, not inform the viewer.

He told America that "authorities claim the officer who fired the shot was injured by the knife."

Read that again.

Thomas never said the suspect stabbed anyone.

He wrote the suspect out of his own knife.

That means ABC spent nearly eighty percent of the segment on everything except the fact that mattered most.

In other words, buried.

CBS and NBC Told Their Viewers Immediately

CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil opened cold with the stabbing before he mentioned outrage or protests at all.

NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas did the same thing seconds into his broadcast.

NBC went further than every other network on the air that night.

NBC alone told viewers that public records showed Ruiz with at least 40 criminal convictions, several of them for resisting or fighting officers.

Court filings reviewed by CNN show Ruiz pleaded guilty since 2021 to charges including resisting police and battery against an officer.

Bystander video verified by NBC News captured people screaming "he's got a knife" seconds before the shots were fired.

ABC's broadcast never mentioned any of it.

Madison's Leaders Are Already Rewriting the Story

While ABC hid the knife, Madison's own leaders started erasing the record around it.

Common Council President Sabrina Madison waved off Ruiz's criminal history entirely.

She told CNN plainly that "police are not judge or jury."

Democratic Socialist gubernatorial frontrunner Francesca Hong branded the shooting an "execution" while investigators were still reviewing camera footage.

She could say that with a straight face because Madison has no body cameras at all.

Madison's city council has voted down body camera funding year after year, most recently turning down Chief John Patterson's renewed request just weeks ago.

Protesters stormed Thursday's press conference, one of them waving a sign that read "corrupt cops deserve to die too."

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has already signed on to represent Ruiz's family.

Four officers were on the scene, but only one of them fired a weapon.

Wisconsin's Department of Justice is running the investigation and still hasn't named the officer who pulled the trigger.

None of that made ABC's broadcast either.

Riot Season Has a Playbook, and ABC Just Ran It

This is a rerun, and conservatives have watched this exact movie before.

Back in 2021, NBC Nightly News edited a frantic 911 call to strip out the caller saying girls were trying to stab her.

NBC also cropped the video so viewers never saw Ma'Khia Bryant's knife before an officer opened fire.

NBC only fixed the report after Fox News and media watchdogs dragged the network publicly for a full day.

ABC just ran the same play in a different city, and nobody has forced a correction yet.

The formula is simple.

Bury the knife.

Protect the suspect.

Let a politician rewrite the verdict before anyone checks the tape.

Pierre Thomas didn't lie outright.

He just decided, sentence by sentence, which facts his viewers were allowed to have before they formed an opinion.

That's not journalism.

That's stagecraft, built for a city already primed to riot.

CBS and NBC proved in the same news cycle that telling the truth up front doesn't require picking a side.

ABC proved it just doesn't want to.

Hundreds of mourners have already held vigil at the intersection where Ruiz died, and the block still hasn't fully reopened a day later.

That's the real story ABC steered around on its way to a softer one.

Granddad doesn't need a journalism degree to see what happened here.

He just needs the one sentence Pierre Thomas tried to bury.

Sources:

• Jorge Bonilla, "ABC's Wisconsin Shooting Coverage Buries Knifing of Police Officer," NewsBusters, July 23, 2026.
• Officials Identify Wisconsin Man Killed in Police Shooting That Reignited Protests, CNN, July 22, 2026.
• Amy Curtis, "Anti-Cop Protesters in Wisconsin Threaten to Kill Police Chief," Townhall, July 24, 2026.
• Police Officer's Fatal Shooting of Man With Knife Roils Madison, Wisconsin, PBS News, July 23, 2026.
• 'NBC Nightly News' Under Fire for Editing Out Key Part of 911 Call Before Ma'Khia Bryant Shooting, Fox News, 2021.
• Wisconsin Officer Kills Man Armed With Knife, Police Say, as Shooting Sparks Protests, NBC News, July 23, 2026.
• Madison Police Shooting Briefing Devolves Into Shouting Match; Hundreds of Mourners Gather for Vigil, Wisconsin Examiner, July 24, 2026.
• Madison Police Shooting Victim Identified as Corey Ruiz Amid Protests, Growing Calls for Accountability, TheGrio, July 24, 2026.