This story is located at the busy intersection of news media incompetence, news media dishonesty, news media bias, news media hatred of Donald Trump, anti-white discrimination, and emotion versus reason.  Long after the news media latched onto this story, their assumptions fell apart, the facts showed the victim to be the bully, and the whole story blew up in their Trump-hating faces.

Related topics:

Media bias
Media incompetence
Media dishonesty
Media bias against Donald Trump
Emotion in place of reason
Fake hate crimes
Race-based political opportunism
Reverse discrimination
Violence and hate speech come from the Left
Perpetual victimhood

Subtopics on this page:

Overview and recap articles:

Hey, GOP! This is What Pushback Looks Like.  [Scroll down]  Another recent example is Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandman agreeing to settle a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against CNN.  Big media accused the MAGA hat wearing teenager of racism, as he stood smiling in front of Native American activist Nathan Phillips beating a drum and chanting in Sandman's face.  Media organizations neglected to show additional video footage showing the Black Hebrew Israelites shouting racial epithets at the students, instigating the entire confrontation.  This was similar to how the media handed the Trayvon Martin incident, calling Zimmerman a "white Hispanic" and doctoring his 911 call.  It's not only pushback against CNN but also other media outlets including future lawsuits against ABC, CBS, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, NPR, Slate, The Hill and Gannett.  Lawsuits have already been filed against the Washington Post and NBC.  Those who have peddled fake news without consequence for years are now learning what pushback looks like.

Top 10 Most Bizarre Viral Hoaxes of 2019.  [#3] A group of students from Convington Catholic High School found themselves suddenly being subjected to an onslaught of threats, as well as defamation by celebrities, media outlets, and individual journalists after one student, Nick Sandmann, was seen smiling in a MAGA hat while he and his classmates were being harassed by Black Hebrew Israelites and a Native American man named Nathan Phillips who confronted Sandmann while banging on a drum.  The Covington hoax ended up being multi-pronged, spurring a series of additional hoaxes as the left appeared desperate to find something — anything — to peg these particular high school students as racists.  Before you knew it, virtually the entire school was being accused of wearing blackface, and the basketball team was falsely accused of using a "Nazi sign" — but the most prominent hoax to have spawned from the Covington incident had to do with Nathan Phillips himself.

Anti-Trump Psychodrama 10.0?  About ten months ago, we witnessed another progressive morality farce, between stereotypical evil white Christian kids wearing MAGA hats and a saintly Native American, Vietnam veteran Nathan Phillips, who was threatened by the punk kids and yet spoke truth to power when he resisted their slurs by beating a drum.  Phillips, we were told, had served in battle on behalf of spoiled white kids who repaid with insults and racism befitting their privileged airs.  When it was revealed that the activist Nathan Phillips had never been to Vietnam, that he was a chronic liar, that he was the one who had first walked over to the teenagers and initiated the stand-off by banging a drum in their faces, and that the kids were being mocked by a group of African-American cult activists, the Left shrugged, went quiet for a bit, and then assumed that facts were not very important because a greater truth had been revealed in yet another pushback against the white male Christian hierarchy.

Chemotherapy for the Republic.  When the corporate leftist media manipulates the news into narratives, sending selectively edited video clips viral and falsely assigning not only blame for a public encounter but even motives such as racism to a young teen such as Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann — all for having the temerity to stand his ground in the face of a strange man chanting in his face, it's clear the cancer is not localized in one building or place but has metastasized culturally across the country.

The Liberal Media 'Matrix'.  Think of the headlines we've encountered since the beginning of this year.  We were told the Covington Catholic boys were smug racist Trump supporters on the basis of a snippet of video.  A young man, a private citizen, whose only offense was traveling to Washington, D.C., to march for life, was transformed at light speed into a symbol of hate and systemic oppression.  However, just as Nick Sandmann's reputation as a villain was about to set in stone, additional videos revealed that the students' encounter with a far-left American Indian activist and the Black Hebrew Israelites was far more complicated than initially reported.  The Covington Catholic boys had been smeared.  People who cast themselves as agents of professional knowledge, expertise, and moral authority had circulated and amplified a lie in the service of a political agenda.  Not for the first nor last time.

Diocese of Covington Clears Catholic Students of Any Wrongdoing, Calls Their Actions 'Laudatory'.  The Diocese of Covington has exonerated the Covington Catholic students of any wrongdoing in the viral incident following the March for Life in January — and added that their actions were "laudatory."  The Diocese had originally condemned the students and apologized on behalf of the students after a liberal media mob swarmed to attack the students.

Independent Investigation Shows Covington Boys Told the Truth, Confirms Nathan Phillips is a Liar Amplified by the Media.  The results of an independent investigation into the January 18, 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation between leftist activist Nathan Phillips, black supremacist group the Black Hebrew Israelites and students from Covington Catholic High School were released Wednesday by Greater Cincinatti Investigation, Inc.  The report, which is four pages long, shows what everyone could have known initially if the time was taken to reach for context:  Covington students didn't use a single racial slur against either Phillips or the Black Hebrew Israelites and they didn't instigate the confrontation.  In fact, it was the opposite.  "We found no evidence of offensive or racist statements by students to Mr. Phillips or members of his group," the report states.  "We found no evidence that the students performed a 'Build the Wall' chant."

'Guilty until proven innocent' is a dangerous bylaw.  Many rushed to conclusions against the Kentucky school's boys, based on snippets of video.  Nobody can prevent social media firestorms, often orchestrated by organized actors in the smear industry.  And we can't stop people from jumping on board the rush-to-judgment train.  But we in the news media can — and certainly should — show more judicious restraint when it comes to reporting news of these events.  After all, we are supposed to be trained reporters of fact.  That requires professional neutrality amid attempts to spin, condemn and rush to judgment.  Of all people, we in the news media should know well that people may be falsely accused, even by government and law enforcement, at times.  Initial accounts are not always what they seem.  Eyewitnesses can be conflicted or mistaken.  Video and photos can be manipulated — a very real concern these days.  Information may be presented out of context. 

Covington Teen's Lawyer Releases Brutal 14-Minute Video Showcasing Lies of Nathan Phillips and Media.  A nationwide media frenzy erupted after the Covington boys were falsely accused of mocking Phillips, spurring hundreds of threats against the school and the school's students from across the country by phone, email, and social media.  Not everyone who helped perpetuate the initial fake story has retracted their claims or apologized, and lawyers for the Covington families are working hard to make sure people are held accountable.  A new fourteen-minute video of the incident in Washington, D.C., last month emphasizes the starring role Phillips took in spreading the fraudulent narrative and the supporting roles the uncritical media took in smearing the innocent kids.

Ready... Fire... Aim.  Here we go again.  A cellphone video that checked all the boxes on the liberal media's insidious game of identity politics score sheet was recently captured in Washington D.C., and it caught some conservative sites and writers in the unsurprising web the liberal media messily spun.  The story involving some students from a Catholic Kentucky high school supposedly confronting a Native American activist with a reported military service past had all the desired variables.  It included whites, males, religion, abortion (March for Life), a protected class (Elderly Native American veteran), and the best visual of all for the liberal media — people involved wearing the Make America Great Again hat.  It was visual overload for the salivating, race hustling, agenda-driven liberal press.  It came complete with a bonus — the ability to drag President Trump into the narrative and smear him.  Finding this story was like hitting the identity politics lottery.

Does Covington Expose the Tipping Point?  Many people who decry Trump's tweets — which are only very pointed, sometimes rude, words that call out the Left — remain silent about the Left's actions to destroy a boy's life with smears, threats to punch/shoot/place in a wood-chipper/burn to death, and dox him and his family.  For what crime is this 16-year-old boy subjected to such totalitarian retaliation?  Wearing a MAGA hat and smiling.  The Left has taken us down into an Orwellian 1984 world where "to wear an improper expression on your face... was itself a punishable offense.  There was even a word for it in Newspeak:  facecrime, it was called."  All to intimidate people who hold different political and religious beliefs into silence.  If you think your minor child is exempt, dream on.  Have them express a politically incorrect view and see how it goes.  That is the future our progeny will experience if we remain silent.

What Young Men of Courage Teach Us about Ourselves.  You might have seen a headline or two about how "Students in Trump Hats Mock Native American."  The story is a carefully crafted piece of propaganda, with a deceptive image and edited video at its core.  As Daniel McCarthy points out, "it was a tale perfectly tailored to liberal biases:  white Catholic teenagers in MAGA hats had harassed an old and frail Indian veteran during the March for Life, which was also the date of an Indigenous People's March."  The opposite appears to be true:  a left-wing activist harassed a bunch of young men waiting for their bus after attending the March for Life.  Instead of taunting, the young men were taunted.  Instead of causing a situation, the young men were restrained and avoided a worse situation.

A Better Guide than Elite Opinion Is Public Revulsion at It.  The boys did not approach or taunt the drum-beating fake-Vietnam-vet creep of an Indian activist Nathan Phillips.  On the contrary, he waded in among them, obnoxiously taunting them while my new favorite group of wackos, the Black Hebrew Israelites, hurled a variety of racist and sexual slurs at the high school students as they waited for a bus to whisk them back to Kentucky after their participation in the annual pro-life March for Life.  Neither fact was clear from the original brief clip of the incident.  The pretend Tonto, beating his drum, and skirling incoherently, stands there in front of Nick Sandmann, the MAGA-behatted Covington Catholic student whose visage has burned up the internet this last week.

The Evil Genius of 'Native American'.  [Scroll down]  Undeterred and certainly not embarrassed, the media moved on to another story:  Catholic high school kids had surrounded, harassed, and taunted a harmless old Native American man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  The kids were Catholic, which Democrats suggest disqualifies them from holding public office.  Most of them were white, so they were obviously racist.  They looked like cis-male heterosexuals, so when they're not harassing old people they're planning their next rape party.  And they're from Kentucky — Kentucky! — Is that even a real place?  I think it's in flyover country somewhere.  So they've got to be gap-toothed, illiterate rednecks who hate gays, Muslims, and who want a Big Beautiful Wall to make refugee children suffer.  Does that about sum it up?

Pride, Prejudice and Covington Catholic.  One way to tell who's right about the kids from Covington Catholic High School is by looking at the pattern of conversions.  Students from the Kentucky school attending the March for Life in Washington D.C. were condemned for allegedly mocking a Native American drummer.  As more video evidence came out, some initial critics of their behavior have apologized.  Nobody who started out defending the kids (or defending them with a reservation or two) has turned critical.  The more rigorous way is to check the claims against the available evidence, as conservative media watchdog Allen Ginzburg has done.  He concludes that the teens "were by far the most decent and honorable participants in this whole situation," reporters and media commenters included.  The inability of some people to concede the point seems to me to be a testament to the power of partisanship and pride.  But you can read the back-and-forth of those arguments elsewhere.  I'm interested in one running theme of the debate: the immense confidence some of the critics have that they know the truth of the matter based on the way the kids look, and specifically based on the face of one of them, 17-year-old Nicholas Sandmann.

The Media Still Don't Get It.  Journalists and pundits ran with an incomplete story about an out-of-context video, showing a student at the March For Life wearing a red MAGA hat smiling in front of a Native American man beating a drum.  They said the boy, Nick Sandmann, and the surrounding students were mocking and harassing the man, Nathan Phillips. [...] The media ran with this.  They had to — the story checked all of the boxes they are ever-so-eager to check:  white, Christian, pro-life Trump supporter is a racist.  They couldn't have concocted a more delicious recipe if they tried. [...] Then the truth came out.  Nearly two hours of footage was published, and the context it provided exonerated the Sandmann and the other Covington students.  As it turns out, members of the cult, Black Hebrew Israelites, were the real perpetrators of hate on the scene, hurling homophobic and racist insults at the teens (haven't heard a peep from leftists about them, though — fascinating).

Trump defends Covington students, calls media coverage 'evil'.  President Trump on Tuesday [1/22/2019] defended the Covington Catholic High School students caught up in a storm of misinformed social media rage over the weekend, calling the news coverage of their controversial encounter with a Native-American elder "evil."  "Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be.  They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the goo — maybe even to bring people together.  It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!" Trump tweeted Tuesday morning [1/22/2019].

Fuller picture emerges of viral video encounter between Native American and Catholic students.  Marcus Frejo, an indigenous hip-hop artist who is also known as Quese Imc, said he was standing with a friend near the black men when tensions flickered.  He said he was worried "something ugly" was going to happen.  Around that time, he said, Phillips approached, asking to borrow a drum.  Together, they headed into the center of the students, creating a sort of prayer circle.  They sang what he said was a well-known spiritual song associated with the American Indian Movement of the 1960s and used for prayer and resistance.  In separate interviews, Frejo and Phillips said they heard the students making noises that seemed to mock Native American chanting.  But Frejo also said he heard some of the students sing along.

What the right should learn from Covington Catholic flap.  The first question any conservative should have asked himself about a picture of a high school kid supposedly harassing an old Indian guy beating a drum was, "Why is this image newsworthy?"  The image was newsworthy because the left shapes the news.  High school kids harass their elders on a daily basis.  Even if the Covington kid was guilty as accused, other kids throughout America were doing worse things to old people during this same news cycle; mugging them, punching them, maybe even killing them.  Even if caught on video, the media would not show these incidents unless the left found them politically useful.  They almost never are, and so they almost never do.  This framing of the news has gone on for more than fifty years.

Only a matter of time before the social media mob comes for you.  As the March for Life in Washington wound down, a video surfaced showing what appears to be a group of Catholic students, many clad in "MAGA" hats, confronting Nathan Phillips, an activist from the Indigenous People's March.  This set off all kinds of social justice alarm bells.  The media leapt into action, condemning the students with ferocity and even vindictiveness.  Journalists went on the offensive.  CNN ran an article titled "Teens in Make America Great Again hats mocked a Native American elder at the Lincoln Memorial" but later changed the headline to "Teen in confrontation with Native American says he was trying to diffuse the situation." [...] The truth is that these high school students were harassed, mocked, and threatened leading up to the confrontation with Philips, who chose to get in their faces and pound his drum.

Covington story was not about race but about people in power attacking people they've failed.  The full video of what happened on Friday in Washington is well over an hour long.  The four minutes that made Twitter don't tell the story, but instead distorted the story.  A longer look shows that the boys from Covington Catholic in Kentucky weren't a roving mob looking for a fight.  They were, in fact — and it shows it on the tape — standing in place waiting to be picked up by a bus.  As they waited there, members of a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black supremacist organization, began taunting them with racial epithets.  Nathan Phillips, the now-famous American Indian activist, also approached them, pounding his drum.  The footage seems to suggest the boys were unsure whether Phillips was hostile or taking their side against the Black Hebrew Israelites.  But in any case, there is no evidence at all that anyone said, "build a wall."

The Covington Kids Just Met Saul Alinsky's Disciples.  There is a generation of people new to the nuance of politics.  There is also a generation of people familiar to things political, but new to the severe constructs within the industry.  Nothing the institutional or professionally political-left does is organic.  Everything is pre-planned, pre-scripted and pre-organized.  All major events, even those that seem oddly organic (George Stephanopoulos asking Romney about constitutionality of birth control '12), are highly scripted — while various elements within allied media await the triggering moments.  Like a political iceberg, two-thirds of the activity is below the surface; only one-third is visible.  If we focus on the surface events, and not on the constructs under the surface, its easy to get caught up in the latest shiny thing.  Professional leftists plan everything.  This is all they do; this is all they know to do.  From birth to maturity, within the machine, every moment of the day is spent planning optimum utilization.  Every event is sequential.

The Ultimate Irony of the 'Native American Elder' and the MAGA Hat Kids.  This past weekend's big news was a big media frame-up of kids and the beating of a leftist drum by a little Indian.  There's no need now to elaborate on how the Covington Catholic High School students may end up being 2019's most unfairly maligned group; their innocence has already been established.  But suffice it to say that with video-recording devices ubiquitous today — and with incidents such as last Friday's Lincoln Memorial affair shot by multiple people from many angles — if there's no footage of something that allegedly happened there, it didn't happen, period.

Protecting Our Children From Radical Leftwing Activists.  The Covington school students were not at the Lincoln Memorial to harass Native American rights activists or any other kind, they were there to celebrate life following the highly successful Right to Life March that this year drew hundreds of thousands of kids and young people to come out in defense of the vulnerable unborn.  Still smarting from the loss of abortion champion Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, the far left couldn't take it.  While chanting and playing the same ceremonial drums, they played in the face of Covington school student, Nick Sandmann and others, the same group of Native American rights activists reportedly led by Nathan Phillips attempted a run on Washington, D.C.'s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during a Saturday evening Mass one day after they accused the Covington kids of bigotry and racism.

General news coverage:

Sandmann Wins Third Defamation Settlement, This Time Against NBC.  Former Covington Catholic high school student Nicholas Sandmann announced this weekend that he has reached a settlement with another news organization he sued for defamation, this time with NBC Universal.  Sandmann, a 19-year-old, sued NBC after the publication falsely accused him of starting a confrontation with a Native American man named Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  This is the third settlement he has reached.  The other two were with CNN and the Washington Post.

Nicholas Sandmann reaches private settlement with NBC over $275M lawsuit.  Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann revealed that he reached a settlement with NBC on Friday following the network's coverage of a controversial confrontation he had with a Native American man in 2019.  'At this time I would like to release that NBC and I have reached a settlement.  The terms are confidential,' Sandmann tweeted on Friday afternoon after reportedly suing the network for defaming him.  The lawsuit settlement with NBC was Sandmann's third with a major news network since 2019.  The teen's legal team also sued The Washington Post for $250 million and CNN for $275 million.

Covington Catholic Student Nicholas Sandmann Says He Settled with NBC.  Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann said Friday that he had reached a settlement with NBC Universal.  "At this time I would like to release that NBC and I have reached a settlement.  The terms are confidential," he tweeted.

Nicholas Sandmann reaches settlement with NBC in Covington Catholic High School controversy.  Nicholas Sandmann settled Friday [12/17/2021] with NBC-Universal, he said.  The media had lambasted the Covington Catholic High School student from Kentucky, now 19, over a confrontation at the 2019 March for Life in Washington, D.C.  "At this time I would like to release that NBC and I have reached a settlement," wrote Sandmann on Twitter, adding that the terms were confidential.

Twitter suspends suspicious account that shared clip of teens' encounter with Native American elder.  A Twitter account with more than 40,000 followers has been suspended after it spread a viral video showing a Native American elder on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last week surrounded by students from a Catholic high school wearing "Make America Great Again" hats.  The account, @2020fight, claimed to have belonged to a California schoolteacher named Talia, but used a picture of a Brazilian blogger, according to CNN Business.  The account tweeted hundreds of times each day and shared a brief video of the encounter between Nathan Phillips and Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann with the words, "This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March."

Covington Catholic Student Begs Local TV News to Tell the Truth About Native American Incident In DC.  The incident took place at the Lincoln Memorial as the students waited for buses to pick them up after participating in the annual March for Life that day.  News reports claimed the students harassed a Native American man named Nathan Phillips — a Vietnam veteran [See note below] — who was trying to perform a religious ceremony.  The students and the school have been viciously attacked online with many threats being made to attack the school children.  As happens too often these days, the media got it wrong.  Numerous videos show the students being approached by Phillips and a group of fellow Native American activists who were at the Lincoln Memorial for an Indigenous Peoples Rally that had ended earlier.  Videos also show the students being harassed by a group of African-Americans who hurled racist and anti-gay insults at the students.

Student Provides Video, Says Classmate Did Not Mock Native American Vietnam Veteran.  After Friday's "March for Life" in Washington, D.C., a group of boys from an all-boys Catholic high school in Kentucky were assembled near the Lincoln Memorial, awaiting the buses that would take them home.  During the wait some of the boys encountered a Native American Vietnam Veteran, Nathan Phillips, who was beating a drum.  A brief video of the incident, which many claimed showed a student mocking or "jeering at" Phillips (as covered by our Sarah Quinlan) went viral.  By Saturday afternoon the student was doxxed, threatened with expulsion, and the incident was being used by the usual suspects as yet another example of toxic masculinity and white privilege.  No one, apparently, attempted to talk to the students involved to hear their side or to see if there were any misunderstandings.

The Media Lied To Punish Kids For Wearing MAGA Hats.  A video went viral on the internet Saturday morning showing a group of kids from Covington Catholic school supposedly surrounding a group of Native Americans while wearing MAGA hats. [...] Within a matter of hours, after main stream media began sharing the story and attempting to identify the students several videos from different angles were released and once again we see the media selectively editing reality to fit a narrative, and this time it was to punish children for supporting the President and the March for Life.  The students from Covington High school were in DC for the March for life and were waiting for their bus home at the Lincoln memorial, that is when noted activist Nathan Phillips approached the group of students, cameras ready, and began beating his ceremonial drum in the face of one of the students.  Nathan Phillips is known to decry racism at the drop of a hat, and is nothing more than a liberal outrage artist.

Innocent High School Kid Inspires Orgy of Hatred.  If liberals don't scare you yet, check out what they want to do to a high school kid who was designated by the media for the Two Minutes Hate for not wearing a sufficiently reverential expression while belligerently demented Indian activist Nathan Phillips got in his face and tried to provoke him by pounding incessantly on a drum. [...] The sort of moonbats who run the news media and entertainment industry want the population disarmed, they want the government to control everything imaginable, and they want themselves in complete control of the government.  If they would sic a vicious mob on a high school kid for allegedly smirking, imagine what they will do to the rest of us if they ever get the power they are after.

Making matters worse:

The 'Hate' Hoax Industry.  Mistaken identity is always a risk when a witch-hunt hysteria takes hold, and the hunt for "hate" in the Trump era has produced a mob mentality that rivals 17th-century Salem.  Just ask Michelle Grissom, a Colorado middle-school teacher who may lose her job because she mistakenly identified the wrong Covington Catholic School student in a viral video — and called him a "Hitler Youth"!  Ms. Grissom has been placed on leave from her position as a social studies teacher at Mountain Ridge Middle School in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch after deleting her Twitter account and apologizing for her error. [...] Adding to Ms. Grissom's misfortunes was the fact that Jay's father is a successful obstetrician who, to say the least, did not take kindly to having his son labeled a Hitler Youth.  After the gravity of her error became apparent, Ms. Grissom issued an abject apology and also resigned her post as local teachers union official.

Who are the Black Hebrew Israelites, the religious group in the viral confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial?  The Black Hebrew Israelites — sometimes called "Black Jews" "Black Hebrews" and "Hebrew Israelites," according to Vox — are a controversial offshoot of an American religious movement known as Black Israelism, The Washington Post reported.  The movement dates back to the 18th century, if not before.  More specifically, the movement is "rooted in Black Judaism," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which noted the Black Judaism doctrine states "when the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed, the Israelites were first scattered across the African continent and then selectively targeted by enemy African tribes who captured and sold them to European slave traders for bondage in the New World."  The principles of the Black Hebrew Israelites vary:  the group does not appear to have an official creed.  In fact, Lewis Gordon, a professor of Africana philosophy at the University of Connecticut, told The Philadelphia Inquirer some sects within the movement "identify as Jews, as Christians, and as neither."

Adults Are Cannibalizing the Covington Kids.  Commentators have been roundly condemned for jumping to conclusions and getting things wrong based on the viral, and as we now know, incomplete and misleading video that started this nationwide existential crisis.  But suppose the first video had been an accurate depiction of what really happened?  The reaction of the adults still would have been self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-centered.  Childish.  No one, including the Covington Catholic High School administration, the local Catholic bishop, our social and cultural talking heads, took responsibility for these kids.  No one offered to be the old-fashioned, reassuring adult standing in front of the accused child, offering to take the punishment on himself because the child is too young to be totally culpable, and too young to be offered as a victim to an angry mob.  Our legal system holds children to a different standard, but our public discourse does not.

Report: Black Hebrew Israelites confronting Covington Catholic students a 'hate group'.  In a statement released Sunday to the media, Covington Catholic High School junior Nick Sandmann, who was shown over the weekend standing face-to-face with an indigenous man Friday [1/18/2019] in Washington, D.C., said the standoff took place after four African-American protesters said "hateful things" to Sandmann and a group of his classmates.  "They called us 'racists,' 'bigots,' 'white crackers,' 'faggots' and 'incest kids.'  They also taunted an African-American student from my school by telling him that we would 'harvest his organs.'  I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear," Sandmann wrote.  The remark about harvesting organs may reference Jordan Peele's horror-satire "Get Out," a 2017 movie in which the black boyfriend of a white girl discovers her family is harvesting the organs of blacks.

Only a matter of time before the social media mob comes for you.  Social media mobs are a cancer on this country, and those in the news business have an obligation not to carelessly magnify malignant efforts at personal destruction.  This affects all of us.  It does not matter who you are, whether you are active online, care about politics, or keep to yourself.  The social justice mob may come for you, your spouse or your child, and engage in a ritualistic destruction of their online reputation.  Even a trip to the Lincoln Memorial for high school kids can be turned into something catastrophic.  The press must be better than this, especially those who have the power of a large online platform.  Perhaps the only way we can change the current climate is to hold accountable those who play into the rage mob and remind the rest of us that, no matter who you are, it is only a matter of time before the online vigilantes come for you too.

Covington Catholic diocese sticks to its calumny against its kids.  Nobody should be all that surprised that leftist mobs and their mainstream media allies perpetrated a false story about Covington Catholic schoolboys in MAGA hats supposedly 'mocking' a Native American, followed by a Twitter feeding frenzy that's going to get them a lawsuit.  As John Hinderaker notes, the blue checkmarks are now swiftly deleting and scrubbing their Twitter statements in a pathetic bid to avoid getting sued.  MAGA kids, of course, know what the left is like from other incidents, and probably can deal that behavior on some level.  But what isn't good is the embrace of the dishonest narrative from the kids' own school and their own Catholic diocese, falsely condemning them in some amazing public calumny they have yet to retract.

Rep. Ilhan Omar attacks Covington boys for 'taunting' Black Hebrew Israelites.  Rep. Ilhan Omar attacked the Covington Catholic students in a tweet late Tuesday, accusing the boys of "taunting 5 Black men" who were part of the Black Hebrew Israelites protest group. [...] The footage does not back up Mrs. Omar's claims that the boys surrounded Mr. Philllips or participated in racist chants.  Videos showed Mr. Phillips approaching the boys while banging on his drum and initial reports of the boys chanting "build that wall" have been debunked.  Videos also showed members of the Black Hebrew Israelites, with some sects deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, shouting homophobic and racist slurs at the boys.  Mrs. Omar's deleted tweet has been widely criticized, with 5,500 retweets and a whopping 21,000 replies, with many users calling her a liar.

Leftist Activism 101: Get in someone's face and then play victim for the cameras.  The recent interaction in DC between high school students (one in particular) and an older activist who is Native American reminded me of a warning I once received from a colleague as to how I needed to prepare myself if I ever was in a hostile crowd or confronted.  A classic leftist/occupy activist tactic, I was warned, was to confront a target and immediately start screaming that the target was being aggressive even though that was not true.  Unsuspecting people in the vicinity would not start recording the incident until there was this commotion.  The videographers accompanying the provocateur also would edit the video to start when the provocateur started screaming.  The target, not knowing what was about to happen, would not be prepared for it, and might even take the bait, such as in pushing the person away physically.  Regardless of what the target did or didn't do, you would have video of the innocent target being portrayed as the aggressor, and the provocateur portrayed as the victim.  It happened to me at Cornell in April 2014 after the student assembly rejected a BDS motion.

Senior Democrat:  Ban Teens from Wearing MAGA Hats.  House Budget Committee chair Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) called Sunday [1/20/2019] for a ban on teenagers wearing "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) hats, in response to a viral video of a confrontation between Catholic students and Native American counter-demonstrators at the March for Life on Friday [1/18/2019] in Washington, DC.  Yarmuth holds one of the most powerful positions in the Democrat-run U.S. House of Representatives.

The Editor says...
He probably also wants to make it illegal to chant, "Lock her up!"

Democrat Chairman Calls for 'Shutdown of Teenagers Wearing MAGA Hats'.  In response to the confrontation between left-wing Indian activists and some Catholic teens following the March for Life, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, has publicly called for prohibiting teenagers from wearing caps that say, "Make America Great Again" (MAGA).  "I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of teenagers wearing MAGA hats until we can figure out what is going on," Yarmuth tweeted on Jan. 20, after a partial video of the confrontation was released.  "They seem to be poisoning young minds," he said.

The Editor says...
What does "shutdown" mean, in this case?  Criminalization of free speech?  Confiscation of red hats?  If Congressman Yarmuth wants to see people "poisoning young minds," he should take a close look at the nearest government indoctrination center, a/k/a public school.

Call-Out Conservatives Join the Left's Lynch Mob.  On Sunday afternoon [1/20/2019], as the media's narrative fell apart and the reality of the situation came into view, National Review quietly removed [Nick] Frankovich's article from its website.  Rich Lowry, the outlet's editor, explained in a very brief post that he and Frankovich had been duped by a "hoax" and that Frankovich's "strongly worded post" had been taken down.  Lowry also deleted a few of his own tweets that inaccurately portrayed the incident.  That was it.  Rather than acknowledge that the editor and deputy editor for a once reliable and thoughtful conservative magazine were complicit in mob-shaming teenage boys attending a pro-life rally, they quickly excused their behavior as nothing more than gullibility.  There was no apology, save for this quasi mea culpa.  There was no "calling out" other conservatives who also had participated in the viral assault on innocent young boys.

Incompetent news media coverage:

12 Stories The Media Got Horribly Wrong In 2019.  January:  Covington Catholic.  The media ripped apart a 16-year-old student seen in a video smirking at a Native American activist on the National Mall during a school trip with Covington Catholic High School to Washington D.C. for the March for Life.  The release of added context however, reveals that Nick Sandmann, a junior at the school who is depicted in the viral image was being harassed along with his peers by members of the Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI).  That didn't stop the media however, from vilifying Sandmann who has since launched legal challenges to media outlets who falsely reported the story.

Oops Journalism.  The coverage of the Covington HS incident during this year's March for Life may have shown journalism at its worse.  Depending on your personal bias, you could find a version of the event to confirm it.  In this age of 24/7 news and instantaneous coverage of events, journalists and the media that employs them have incentives to be first with a piece of news.  If they get it wrong, many don't engage in introspection; they simply move on.

Washington Post admits it screwed up big in the Covington Catholic story.  It's amazing, the difference a $250 million defamation lawsuit can make.  The Washington Post published an editor's note Friday evening admitting, way too late, that it badly bungled its coverage of the Covington Catholic High School story.  Major newsrooms, including the Post, falsely reported in January that a group of Covington Catholic High School students had abused and taunted an elderly Native American protester, Nathan Phillips, after the March for Life in Washington, D.C. The students did no such thing, as publicly available video showed.  Sadly, the truth of the matter came out only after the press, most especially the Post, had already spread a narrative based entirely on vicious falsehoods.

Washington Post issues lengthy correction over Covington Catholic confrontation.  The Washington Post published a lengthy editor's note Friday acknowledging errors in its coverage of a viral incident between high school student Nicholas Sandmann and Native American demonstrator Nathan Phillips in January. [...] The Post is facing a $250 million defamation lawsuit from Sandmann, filed in February.  Based on an incomplete recording of the incident, the Post had initially reported that Phillips was prevented by a student in the group from moving past them.  The newspaper had also stated Phillips had been taunted by students before the encounter, and that the students were the instigators of the incident.  "Subsequent reporting, a student's statement and additional video allow for a more complete assessment of what occurred, either contradicting or failing to confirm accounts provided in that story," the Post's note states.

Smollett case proves that journalism in this country is dead and buried.  In case after case after case, the mainstream media, they devour any story that just fits their radical, extreme extension of the Democratic socialist party agenda.  If it advances the narrative that Donald Trump is evil and his supporters are bad and America is scary and racist and sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, the media mob will shift into full gear without performing any due diligence — without even picking up the telephone, without any kind of investigation, not even five minutes worth.  Look at what they did to the 16-year-old Covington high school student, Nick Sandmann.  Off a 15-second blurb, they accused him of being a racist, harassed him, accused him of assaulting a 65-year-old activist and getting in his face.  They tried to ruin this kid's life with slander, smearing, besmirching, character assassination.

Case of the Covington kids is a perfect example of media bias.  If you are in a public place and someone starts heckling you, are you entitled to heckle back?  What if your heckler starts banging a drum in your face?  Are you allowed to answer him with a smirk?  I think you are, even if you are wearing a MAGA hat.  Even if you're an entitled brat.  The kids from Covington Catholic HS in Covington, Ky., were ambassadors for causes much bigger than themselves:  Catholicism and the March for Life.  As such, they should have comported themselves better than to jeer and do a tomahawk chop in front of Nathan Phillips, an indigenous man who banged a drum at them in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Friday.  Ideally, the kids would have ignored him and walked away.  Until about 10 minutes ago, though, it was broadly agreed in our culture that kids are allowed to do some dumb things because they are kids.

Social justice has become a new excuse for prejudice.  Social justice confuses racial enlightenment with stereotyping, as exemplified by the recent confrontation between MAGA hat-clad teenagers from a Catholic school and a black nationalist group fronted by a Native American man.  The Atlantic's James Fallows explicitly rejected the idea of individuality in this conflict.  To him, the teenagers were the nondescript heirs to the 20th century's segregationists, and their abusers were their righteous and aggrieved victims.  The Washington Post saw this as a chance to litigate the historic injustices the Catholic Church has visited upon America's indigenous population.

Bigotry Against Christians Harms The Media's Reputation.  Yesterday morning [1/27/2019] on "MediaBuzz" with Howard Kurtz, I was asked to explain how so many journalists could have gotten the Covington boys story so terribly wrong.  I responded that the problems started with many in the media's bigotry against Christians, conservatives, and pro-lifers.  In recent days we've seen reporters attack Karen Pence for volunteering at a Christian school, attempt to dig up dirt against Christian schools, and viciously attack 16-year-old Catholic boys who were being harassed by adults spewing racist and homophobic slurs.

The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story.  [Scroll down]  By Saturday, the story had become so hot, and the appetite for it so deep, that some news outlets felt compelled to do some actual reporting.  This was when the weekend began to take a long, bad turn for respected news outlets and righteous celebrities.  Journalists began to discover that the viral video was not, in fact, the Zapruder film of 2019, and that there were other videos — lots and lots of them — that showed the event from multiple perspectives and that explained more clearly what had happened.  At first the journalists and their editors tried to patch the revelations onto the existing story, in hopes that the whole thing would somehow hold together.  CNN, apparently by now aware that the event had taken place within a complicating larger picture, tried to use the new information to support its own biased interpretation, sorrowfully reporting that early in the afternoon the boys had clashed with "four African American young men preaching about the Bible and oppression."  But the wild, uncontrollable internet kept pumping videos into the ether that allowed people to see for themselves what had happened.

Media Shows Its Face in Attack on Kids.  [Scroll down]  Ironies abound.  People warning about stereotypes hoisted themselves on their own petard in creating ideologically neat caricatures of the kids.  An online mob called for violence against what it termed a mob:  Catholic high school students gathering to catch a bus (not every assembled group constitutes a mob). Adults inveighing against bullying viciously attacked a group of teenagers.  Self-righteousness enables people to engage in the very behaviors they rail against.  A Catch-22 quality colors the Fourth Estate.  Journalists want their audience to hate all things Trump.  But the more they show their audience that they hate all things Trump, the more they discredit themselves to their audience.

BuzzFeed and HuffPo Just Got Hit with the Karma Stick.  A Catholic school in Kentucky had to shut down this week due to hundreds of death threats, because a bunch of self-described journalists spread a disgusting smear that they were too lazy to check out for themselves.  Pardon me if I don't weep for those guardians of truth less than a week later, as they pack up their desks.

The media lied.  And the media is the victim.  Read about it in the media.  When the media gets caught lying or a Democrat is caught committing a crime, then it's spun as "Republicans pounce on X" or "Conservatives take advantage of the opportunity to...".  Beyond the obvious projection is the inherent admission that the media sees itself as the messaging arm of the Left.  But the Washington Post piece is particularly egregious in that it claims that its reporters were the victims of a viral story that they couldn't bother fact checking and that conservative social media fact checking media lies was some sort of entrapment.  News flash.  When you lie and get caught lying, it's not entrapment.  Nobody forced the Washington Post to jump on this bandwagon.  It chose to do so because of its toxic politics.

No MAGA Hats in the Opinion Workers Union Hall.  [Scroll down]  The news of the discharges came after days of coverage respecting the confrontation between a make-believe Vietnam veteran and some Catholic school boys who did not take the bait to respond to his aggressive moves and were nevertheless falsely accused of the left's favorite sin — racism.  After a series of hoaxes in which white males were proven to have been unfairly accused of racism and sexism and such we were naturally skeptical.  There was the Trayvon Martin ("white Hispanic") nonsense, the Ferguson ("hands up, don't shoot') lies, the Duke Lacrosse Team hoax, the UVA fraternity debacle and the Judge Kavanaugh hokum, to name some of the publicized libels and defamations in the left's quiver against straight white males.

Anti-Catholicism and media malpractice.  The scene at the Lincoln Memorial last weekend was a perfect microcosm of America's current culture wars.  One thing happened, yet two completely different stories have taken hold, with each side telling its own tale to confirm its own prejudices.  What America needs is a class of professionals who could review all the evidence, without fear or favor, and present to the public a clear and comprehensive picture taking in many perspectives.  Of course, most of our press is not doing that.  Most of our press rushed without sobriety, without facts, and without even the slightest effort at balance or even perspective and believed the most one-sided version of the story.

Apologies Aren't Enough After The Covington And BuzzFeed Media Fiascos.  Why didn't the rest of the news media use greater caution before pushing the questionable BuzzFeed piece? [...] Just like the despicable coverage of the Covington high school kids, unchecked hatred of Trump has caused the press not only to drop any pretense of objectivity, but to abandon what reporters claim is their primary professional obligation:  To get the facts straight before reporting them to the public.  Apologizing after the fact doesn't do anyone any good.  If mainstream reporters don't like Trump calling their work "fake news," they should stop providing him so many fresh examples.

AP stickin' with the story.  A reader writes from China to lend a hand to attorneys who may represent the MAGA hat-wearing Catholic high school students in their potential libel lawsuits.  According to the AP and other outlets, these students allegedly mocked a Native American after they participated in the pro-life rally in DC on Friday. [...] The story has now been widely debunked.  The young man who became the target of the resulting abuse has also issued his own statement recounting what happened.  The original AP story is essentially a crock.  It is based on a distorted account of the underlying events.  As of this morning [1/21/2019], however, the AP still has its original story with the attention-grabbing headline posted without retraction, addition, clarification or correction:  "Students in MAGA hats mock Native American rally."

ABC Admits Others 'Rushed to Judgement' on Catholic Teens Viral Vid, Ignores They Did Too.  ABC's Good Morning America admitted Monday [1/21/2019] that the incident at the March for Life that went viral appearing to show Catholic teens in MAGA hats sneering at a Native American veteran, was taken out of context.  However, ABC failed to acknowledge that their own network also slandered these kids with their hasty reporting based off of on one viral video.  On Monday, ABC's Cecilia Vega led into the report noting the original video released over the weekend had "quickly sparked outrage online" but that another video was "raising new questions about what really happened before the incident."  Vega didn't note that their own network helped spark that outrage, when This Week host Martha Raddatz tried to shame Republican Senator James Lankford into condemning the Catholic, pro-life teens wearing "Make America Great Again" hats as racists.

What's News?  On Friday [1/18/2019], somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people attended the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.  The crowd dwarfed that at the Women's Anti-Semites' March the following day.  Vice-President Pence addressed the March for Life crowd in person, and President Trump spoke via satellite.  Was that news?  No.  The only "news" that emerged from the massive rally arose out of a peaceful confrontation between some high school boys from Kentucky and an elderly Native American Man and a group of his followers.  Supposedly, the boys treated the man disrespectfully.  This became front-page news across the country.  Why? [...] The MAGA hats were, of course, key to the story.  They made the insignificant encounter into front page news, because the left-wing media got a twofer:  an opportunity to smear both the right to life movement and President Trump and his supporters.  If you paid attention to the news, you would think that the only noteworthy thing that happened at the March for Life was the Indian/teenager standoff.  Yet it turned out that even that meagre story was mis-reported.

Bill Kristol deletes tweet, fails to apologize for jumping on phony story of MAGA hat kids harassing Native American.  On Friday, a group of March for Life teenagers from Covington, Ky. were harassed by an extremist demonstrator, a Native American beating a drum, and, through carefully edited video, were widely portrayed in the mainstream media as mean harassers of a poor Native American war veteran.  Taylor Day busted the fraud on our pages today, but you can quickly grasp the gist of the fraud through this video from the Daily Caller:  [Video clip] A number of conservatives jumped on the virtue-signaling bandwagon, accepting at face value yet another fake news story seeking to castigate Trump and his supporters.  Those with integrity, once they realized that their eagerness to display moral superiority to other conservatives, apologized.

Media Narrative of "Catholic MAGA high schoolers mob Native American elder" doesn't hold up to video scrutiny.  The internet blew up over a (as it turns out) heavily-edited clip of white male Catholic March for Life high schoolers apparently taunting, mocking, and otherwise behaving badly toward a Native American elder.  Even many on the right condemned the MAGA hat-wearing boys for their perceived vile behavior.  The problem?  We didn't get the whole story, and many people, including those on the left, are now expressing their regret at jumping too readily to condemn these boys.  As it turns out and in the true spirit of "unexpectedly," there is much more to this story than we were first treated to in the initial reports.

Today Show Either Doesn't Do Their Homework or Intentionally Ran Cover for Fraud Nathan Phillips.  One day after a ridiculous interview on the Today Show in which Savannah Guthrie asked leading questions trying to shame Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann, she is back with an even more absurd interview with his antagonist, far-left activist Nathan Phillips.  During the interview with Phillips, Guthrie asserted, "some have said you're a Vietnam vet — I don't believe you have said that."  Guthrie either didn't do her homework or was intentionally misleading to run cover for the activist.  This is why nobody trusts the mainstream media.

NBC Digs Itself Into Deeper Hole:  Blatant Double Standard on Sandmann-Phillips Interviews.  NBC had a chance to demonstrate that the "mainstream" media is not irredeemably wedded to Fake News.  It blew it.  Big time.  Even worse, it piled outrage on top of outrage.  NBC's dishonest and friendly interview on the Today show with political agitator Nathan Phillips (shown) contrasts sharply with its dishonest and decidedly unfriendly interview the day before with Nick Sandmann.  And that's not all; the network glaringly ignored the irrefutable video evidence that shows NBC — along with virtually the entire Big Media cartel — got the original story completely wrong.  Not only did NBC fail to apologize for their initial false, defamatory, and inflammatory reporting, but, their subsequent one-sided interviews with Sandmann and Phillips show (in case there was any doubt) that NBC is beyond redemption.  Unfortunately, much the same can be said for the rest of the Fake News industrial complex.

Journalism Isn't Dead; It's Undead.  A popular theme in the Twitterverse this week is "Journalism is dead."  Two events apparently driving the disgust du jour with media incompetence and dishonesty are BuzzFeed's story about President Trump allegedly asking Michael Cohen to commit perjury, and the group of boys from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky accused of racist behavior at the March for Life in Washington, D.C.  The BuzzFeed "bombshell" was defused when special counsel Robert Mueller's office issued a statement flatly contradicting the story.  Authors Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold admitted that they had not personally seen the documents they referenced.  Additional doubt has been cast on the story's credibility by Leopold's record of inaccuracies and outright falsehoods.  But the BuzzFeed bust is nothing compared with the Covington Catholic conflagration.

Call 'Fake News' By Its Real Name:  Bad Journalism.  I hate the term "fake news" as it's currently applied — even to two recently debunked stories:  [#1] The report — inconveniently denied by none other than the Special Counsel's office — and resulting media hysteria around alleged documentary evidence showing President Donald Trump had ordered attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Robert Mueller's investigators.  [#2] Initial media response buying in to charges that boys from Covington Catholic High School had surrounded and harassed a Native American veteran (he approached them) and had responded with a "lynch mob mentality" to "truth" from black activists (which turned out to be hate-filled profanity).

Apologies Aren't Enough After The Covington And BuzzFeed Media Fiascos.  In the span of a couple days, the mainstream press pushed two stories that caused a flurry of outrage.  Neither was true.  Both were the direct result of the media's pathological hatred of President Donald Trump.

The lessons of Covington Catholic.  Let us recap what happened.  A group of high school boys used the King holiday weekend to visit Washington and participate in the anti-abortion March For Life.  While they waited for their bus after visiting the Lincoln Memorial, four black nationalists heckled them.  An Indian activist taunted them by approaching them and beating a drum.  He got in the face of one boy.  The Washington Post reported the story backward as it made the man who started it the victim.

Trump: Covington Catholic students 'treated unfairly' and 'smeared by media'.  President Trump issued his first public statement Monday on the viral encounter between white teenagers wearing "Make America Great Again" hats and a Native American elder last week on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  After Fox News' Tucker Carlson ran a segment on the "rush to judgment" on the short clip that started the controversy, Trump offered words of support for Nick Sandmann and his peers from Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School.

Trump Fights the Covington Culture War After Passive Conservatives Surrender.  President Trump spoke out Tuesday [1/22/2019] against the media assault on the Covington Catholic High School students, leaping into a Culture War melee after many establishment conservatives either backed away from the fight or actively supported the false narrative pushed by left-wing media.

Apologies Aren't Enough After The Covington And BuzzFeed Media Fiascos.  On Saturday, the New York Times ran a story with the headline:  "Boys in 'Make America Great Again' Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March." [...] The article described it as an "unsettling encounter" that "became the latest touchpoint for racial tensions in America, particularly under Mr. Trump."  The story quoted Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's Democratic secretary of state, condemning the "horrific scenes."  The Washington Post followed up with a story on Sunday quoting the Native American, Nathan Phillips, saying that he "felt threatened by the teens and that they swarmed around him."  Then, later that same day, the story fell apart.  More complete video evidence — not just the misleading seconds-long clip — showed that Phillips approached the students, not the other way around.  It showed that another group of adult men had been hurling obscenities at the teenage students before Phillips showed up.  And it showed that, if anything, the students acted with restraint as chaos mounted.  What it didn't show were racists threatening a Native American who happened to be walking by.  Meanwhile, Phillips turned out to be a very unreliable witness.

Limbaugh: NRO Pushed Covington Hoax to Win 'Approval of the Mainstream Media'.  Rush Limbaugh identified National Review as a news media outfit that prioritizes the pursuit of "approval [from] the mainstream media" over veracity in reporting, offering his remarks on Monday's edition of his eponymous show.  Limbaugh highlighted recent news media narratives framing a group of Covington Catholic High School students as "racists," including agreement from ostensibly conservative news media outlets and personalities.

Backtracking, retractions, apologies:

What would a hybrid civil war look like?  Nobody says sorry anymore, they just retreat into a private reality where they are always right.  The Washington Post, still reeling from misidentifying the victim and aggressor in a story about Covington Catholic High School students and activist Nathan Phillips, simply slapped itself on the wrist with an Editor's Note admitting it got its account wrong and declared it all square.

After Covington:  CYA, More Lies, and Intransigent Goblin Hate.  [Nick] Sandmann and the other Covington kids might have expected some support from their school and their church, but no.  The Diocese of Covington and the Covington Catholic High School condemned the kids' reported behavior, apologized to [Nathan] Phillips, and announced they would punish the miscreants.  This could include expulsion.  Other Catholic leaders and clergy joined in without soliciting the students' side of the story.  It was days before they retracted their remarks.

Bishop Foy Apologizes for Being 'Bullied' into 'Premature Statement' on Covington Incident.  The Bishop of Covington on Friday apologized to parents of Covington Catholic High School for being "bullied" into issuing a "premature statement" regarding an incident involving some of its students and a Native American activist during last Friday's March for Life event in Washington, D.C.

The Evil Clowns.  The roller-coaster reactions following a video purportedly showing Covington Catholic high school boys mocking a native American who claimed he was a Vietnam veteran elder began with a wave of outrage and ended with a whimper of embarrassment when unedited source video showed the shoe was on the other foot.  The humiliating reversal culminated in a correction by the Washington Post that the elder was not a Vietnam veteran at all.  "Correction:  Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that Native American activist Nathan Phillips fought in the Vietnam War.  Phillips served in the U.S. Marines from 1972 to 1976 but was never deployed to Vietnam."  But by then it had involved the amour propre of literally hundreds of pundits and social media celebrities who simply couldn't admit to being so cringingly wrong.  The quantity of barbecued crow was so great it was difficult to ingest.  Some flatly refused.  One journalist wrote after the exculpating evidence came out:  "I refuse to read it, but from what I have read, Reason has found in a MAGA teen video their own Zapruder film but for 'disproving' white supremacy."  The urge to believe in something can be so great that people can sincerely see things that aren't there.  The social media obsession with racism and toxic masculinity eventually turned the Covington boy's "smirking faces" into the new Evil Clown sighting of 2019.

Conservative press apologizes for saying students harassed a Native American protester.  Several conservative members of the media are walking back their condemnation of the Covington Catholic High School students who were accused of attempting to intimidate a Native American protester, after a video of the incident seemed to confirm those accusations were baseless.  The late John McCain's daughter and Republican voice on "The View," Meghan McCain, said she "reacted too quickly" and "apologize[d] for being part of a media pile on."

National Review should apologize.  National Review scolded conservatives on Sunday [1/20/2019] for falling for the Fake News about Covington Catholic High school.  Students from the all-male school in suburban Cincinnati visited the capital over the weekend, where they were accosted at the Lincoln Memorial by Nathan Phillips, a liberal Indian who tried to provoke a racial incident.  Instead they just smiled.  Our little drummer boy apparently likes to provoke Trump supporters for a living.

Rep. Ilhan Omar quietly deletes inaccurate attack on students from Covington Catholic.  The only thing worse than a malicious lie is the people who try to keep it alive even after it has been thoroughly discredited.  And that's exactly what Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., did Tuesday evening [1/22/2019] when she repeated a series of disproven allegations leveled against a group of Covington Catholic High School students who attended the March for Life last week.  They were falsely accused this weekend of "mobbing" Nathan Phillips, a Native American protester — footage of the incident shows otherwise.

Retribution and threats of violence from the Left:

Covington Gives Us a Glimpse of Civil War Two.  During the attempted electronic lynching of the Covington Catholic high school boys on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the mask hiding the Left's genocidal rage slipped and was momentarily visible.  The reality of the confrontation was inverted 180 degrees by the duplicitous mainstream media so that a smiling white teenager was made to face the wrath of an Orwellian two-minute hate that stretched on for days, even after the factual record was corrected.  Accelerated by social media, the virtual lynch mob called for, among other horrors, MAGA-hat-wearing teenage boys to be fed headfirst into wood chippers, or for them to be locked en-masse into their school and the school to be burned to the ground.  This hurricane of socially sanctioned racial fury did not arise spontaneously, but was the result of deliberate cultivation over the past few decades by the political Left, academia, the mainstream media, and the Hollywood entertainment elite.

People who want to put kids in a wood chipper should maybe be on the no-fly list.  America can be proud that in a moment of an ugly attack against children, a prosecutor has entered the engagement to bring accountability and justice to some stupid and hateful people. [...] Everyone in America has First Amendment rights to say just about anything.  But there is a law enforcement line that is legally crossed when a person is making physical threats.

Andrew Sullivan on Covington: 'They were 16-year-olds subjected to verbal racist assault'.  In science one of the ways you confirm your results is by having someone else replicate the experiment.  If follow the same procedure and reach the same result, it's a sign your experiment wasn't a fluke or an accident.  The same thing applies to some degree to people's read on the Covington High story from last weekend.  On Wednesday I wrote about Caitlan Flanagan's excellent piece at the Atlantic in which she spelled out what many before her had intentionally glossed over.  It was the Black Hebrew Israelites who were spewing ugly racial venom, not the high school kids.

Who Are The Black Israelites?  The Black Israelites are the group of black men who intimidated the Covington Catholic high school boys during the MAGA hat debacle at the March for Life in Washington, D.C.  They were shown on the extended footage calling them derogatory names such as "faggots," "crackers" and "incest babies." [...] They're also against interracial relationships and have controversial views on Jesus, complex geopolitical economics, parenting and Christmas.

Covington Catholic Mom Fights Back Tears As She Recalls Hatred Directed At Teen Boys:  They Were Targeted For "Color Of Their Skin".  Jill Hamlin, a mom who chaperoned the Covington Catholic High School boys at the March for Life, appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to address what really happened on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday and to talk about Covington Catholic High School being shut down for the day.  The segment started when Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt told her viewers that Covington Catholic High School kids have been called "racists" and that the school has been forced to close over death threats the students have received.

Twitter Allows 'Verified' Calls for Violence Against Conservative High School Kids.  Twitter has spent years assuring the public that it will crack down on trolling, harassment, and violent threats.  It's also pledged to tackle "misinformation" and "unhealthy conversation," using these loaded terms as excuses to ban a wide range of anti-progressive dissidents from the platform.  But when innocent conservative high school kids are flooded with violent threats, targeted harassment and doxing on the basis of media-promoted misinformation, Jack Dorsey and his staff seem to do nothing — it even briefly promoted the smears.

Vulture Writer Who Wished Death on Covington Students Fired From Job at INE Entertainment.  Digital company INE Entertainment has fired a journalist who publicly wished for the death of several Covington Catholic High School students and their parents in a pair of tweets over the weekend.  Aside from his job as a post-production supervisor at INE, Erik Abriss is a contributor to New York Media's pop culture site Vulture.  "We were surprised and upset to see the inflammatory and offensive rhetoric used on Erik Abriss' Twitter account this weekend.  He worked with the company in our post-production department and never as a writer," the company said in a statement to TheWrap on Monday [1/21/2019]. "While we appreciated his work, it is clear that he is no longer aligned with our company's core values of respect and tolerance.  Therefore, as of January 21, 2019, we have severed ties with Abriss."

Journalist fired after wishing death on Covington Catholic HS students, parents: report.  A freelance Vulture journalist was fired from his main job at digital company INE Entertainment after wishing death for multiple Covington Catholic High School students and their parents in the wake of controversy over the incident between students and Native American activists, a report said.  Erik Abriss, a post-production supervisor at INE Entertainment, was fired after his tweets about the controversy involving teenage students went viral.  He is reportedly a freelance journalist for Vulture.

Fake Vietnam vet's backstory falls apart.  Unsavory facts have emerged about the obnoxious Indian activist Nathan Phillips who accosted Catholic high schooler Nick Sandmann at the Lincoln Memorial for being a white male Trump supporter. [...]The nation's biggest fake news story to date this year began when a video posted online over the weekend showed Sandmann's awkward reaction to having his personal space aggressively invaded by a loud left-wing agitator.  The student's pleasant demeanor was taken by some to be an affront to Phillips.  But because Sandmann is a living embodiment of everything today's Left's despises — whites, males, straights, Catholics, and especially Trump supporters — somehow the young man's remarkably restrained, mature posture turned into a threat to the republic in the minds of leftists.  The showdown between Sandmann and Phillips sparked a massive leftist-led social media meltdown in which the mainstream media and leftists spewed bile at the student and his classmates, including demands that they be murdered.

Covington Catholic Cancels School Early Tuesday Morning Due to Safety Concerns, No Parents or Students Allowed on Campus.  Covington Catholic High School has sent out a prerecorded message to parents telling them that school is cancelled on Tuesday due to "safety concerns."  Parents received nearly no information from the school since the incident — other than a brief email on Monday that did not address the Antifa protesters threatening to protest the campus on Tuesday [1/22/2019]. [...] The school has still not apologized for throwing their students under the bus and feeding them to the leftist mob.

Journalist fired after wishing death on Covington Catholic HS students, parents: report.  A freelance Vulture journalist was fired from his main job at digital company INE Entertainment after wishing death for multiple Covington Catholic High School students and their parents in the wake of controversy over the incident between students and Native American activists, a report said.  Erik Abriss, a post-production supervisor at INE Entertainment, was fired after his tweets about the controversy involving teenage students went viral.  He is reportedly a freelance journalist for Vulture.

Press failed Covington Catholic kids.  A day after another story of Mad Hatter Mueller's investigation blew up in the face of the press like an exploding cigar, the press latched on to the tale of group of white privileged boys mocking a poor old Indian at the Lincoln Memorial who bangs a drum to honor his fellow Vietnam veterans.  Now we know that's a pack of lies.  We know this not because of any gumshoe reporting by the Washington press corps, but because a few good citizens fact-checked the story and discovered the lies.  The initial anti-Catholic reporting by the Washington Post led to death threats that have closed Covington Catholic High in Kentucky, which the boys attend.  But the Indian, Nathan Phillips, is not a Vietnam veteran.

'They were screaming horrible, horrible things': Covington chaperone tells her side of the MAGA hat incident.  Covington Catholic school chaperone Jill Hamlin told her side of the MAGA hat March for Life story on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday [1/22/2019] and said the school jumped the gun with their initial statement.  "We were all just gathered on the steps.  You know, we had obviously heard the horrific insults that were thrown at our children by the black Hebrew Israelites and the boys were gathered on the steps," she said.  "I don't know why Nathan Phillips chose Nick Sandmann.  I think he would have targeted anyone but maybe it was because Nick Sandmann had the courage to look this man in the face and he tried to diffuse the situation by not reacting.  And by standing there respectfully."  Hamlin said the boys' main focus was on the March for Life and said the school has attended the event every year.  "We were not there for any other purpose other than to attend the peaceful March for Life which we did," she added.

Nathan Phillips:

Here's What We All Know About the Media's 'Mistakes'.  For starters, we have the Covington Kids fiasco.  Remember when news outlets like CNN rushed to report on the story of a group of apparently racist white kids harassing a poor, innocent Native American man in Washington D.C.?  These supposed junior KKK members, sporting MAGA hats, were filmed viciously berating and mocking Nathan Phillips, a Vietnam veteran who just wanted to play his drum.  In fact, Phillips told The Washington Post that the Nazis-in-Training "wouldn't allow him to retreat."  We know how that situation played out.  The full video was released by the Black Hebrew Israelites who were actually responsible for starting the altercation in the first place.  Only a few days later, the nation knew that it was Phillips who approached the kids while the Black Hebrew Israelites hurled racial and homophobic slurs at them.

Top 10 Most Bizarre Viral Hoaxes of 2019.  [#4] Nathan Phillips, the Native American man at the center of the Covington controversy, is not a Vietnam veteran — as his military records show that he did not actually serve in Vietnam — despite numerous accounts in the media saying he did.  Even NBC's Savannah Guthrie was caught spreading fake news with Phillips about his Vietnam claims by misleading Today Show viewers about how he portrayed his service record.

Snopes Veers Far Left:  Smears Tennessee Star And Promotes Bizarre Conspiracy Theory.  One of the more interesting phenomena of the internet age is the rise of self-appointed Leftwing "fact checkers" who have created a cottage industry of undermining straight news reporting critical of Democrats and Leftist causes. [...] One of the most egregious recent examples of Snopes.com's Leftist tilt is its defense of Native American Nathan Phillips from claims of stolen valor leveled at him after he instigated the post-March for Life confrontation with the Covington Catholic High School students.  While Snopes.com rated the charges that Phillips falsely claimed he was a Vietnam veteran as "unproven" and posted a lengthy defense of him here, the military culture website "Task and Purpose" had already exposed Phillips stolen valor claims.

Top Ten Disturbing Takeaways from the Covington Crucifiction.  [#2] The press' failure to vet Chief Sitting Bull:  How did it never even enter the thought process of the propagandists from the profession formerly known as Journalism not think that they would get fact checked on every detail of this story?  Even worse, Phillips is a professional agitator who's been in the public eye for some time now.  And never once did they bother to look into his background?

A few questions for Nathan Phillips about CovCath encounter.  Here are some of them:  [#1] Why did you march up to the Covington Catholic students and start banging your drum instead of walking up to the adults from the Black Hebrew Israelites who were viciously insulting not only them, but members of your own group as well?  [#2] Did you hear the epithets that the members of this known hate group were shouting at the these teenagers?  [#3] In talking to the news media about the incident did you refer to the students as "the beast" and the Black Hebrew Israelites as their "prey"?  [#4] Video evidence shows members of the Black Hebrew Israelites calling the students "incest babies" and singling out one of their African-American classmates with a racial slur. [...] Did you hear any of those exchanges?  Would you describe the behavior of the Black Hebrew Israelites towards the students as "respectful"?

Nathan Phillips Lied.  The Media Bought It.  If you're in a public place and someone starts heckling you, are you entitled to heckle back?  How about if someone does something much worse than heckling you in a public place?  What if that person in fact takes a drum up to you and starts banging it in your face?  Are you entitled to heckle back?  How about smirking?  Are you allowed to smirk? [...] To put it another way, if you were minding your own business in a public place and someone came right up to you and put a drum up to your face and made a huge racket inches from your nose, would you be happy about it? [...] Phillips was the aggressor in the situation.  It's a curious feature of our culture that people aggressively seek to be victimized, go out of their way in hopes of getting punched in the face, but here we are.  People do that because they know the media hand out condemnation based on perceived ranking in the victim hierarchy.

Nathan Philips Couldn't Have Been a Vietnam Vet, Why Didn't the Media Notice?  The Washington Post, among other papers, put out stories trying to blame its reporting on Covington Catholic on the speed at which social media news moves.  The same people who want the power to censor social media with their fact checks failed to do basic reporting.  Forget digging up more video footage.  The media failed Fact Checking 101.

HATE HOAX: Native American Activist Approached Chanting Covington Catholic Teens, Got In Their Face.  The viral Twitter posts claiming a group of Covington Catholic teenagers aggressively "surrounded" a Native American man on Friday and "mocked," "harassed" and "threatened" him is officially the biggest hate hoax of 2019.  An out-of-context video showing one teenager standing still and smiling (with other students around him singing a school chant) while Native American activist Nathan Phillips bangs a drum and chants in his face went viral on Twitter on Saturday, quickly amassing over 5 million views.  The story was picked up by hundreds of news outlets — without a hint of skepticism — who portrayed the kids as evil racists.

Critics Push Back Against Media Reports Covington Catholic High School Students Racist Toward Native American Drummer.  Critics are pushing back against the portrayal of students from Covington Catholic High School as racist, after a confrontation between the school and a Native American counter-demonstrator at the March for Life on Friday. [...] A viral video showed a group of male students cavorting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as a Native American man beating a drum walked toward them.  The students' gestures were perceived as mocking him.  Media pundits pounced on the students. [...] And yet a full examination of the video evidence shows a more complicated picture.  Video posted by a group of left-wing activists present showed that the students had been taunted with racial slurs as the incident took place.

What makes a liberal want to punch a child?  If someone walks up to you and bangs a drum in your face, are you guilty of harassing the drummer?  You might be if you're white and wearing a MAGA hat. [...] It was a tale perfectly tailored to liberal biases:  white Catholic teenagers in MAGA hats had harassed an old and frail Indian veteran during the March for Life, which was also the date of an Indigenous People's March.  BuzzFeed had just two anonymous sources, purportedly in 'law-enforcement,' for its story, which a few brave souls found to be rather too little to justify the attendant hype.  The contrarians appear to have been right, but what BuzzFeed misreported was so perfectly attuned to elite and progressive anti-Trump sensibilities that no hesitation was necessary before accepting the tale as true.

Native Activist Nathan Phillips never served in Vietnam.  On last night's [1/23/2019] episode of The Ezra Levant Show, journalist Cassandra Fairbanks joined me to reveal the "Vietnam vet" Nathan Phillips involved with the "Covington kids" fiasco never fought in that war — but raised money by saying he did.

The Truth about the Lincoln Memorial Incident.  Hours of footage, from the livestream of one of the black Israelites and cell phone footage from bystanders show that the boys came, assembled as instructed to await their buses, and left without any of the cruel mocking they have been accused of (unless you consider popular Fortnite dances cruel mockery).  Their entire presence is recorded nonstop and never is "Build the Wall" heard despite the media quoting it as if true.  Philips, the Native American, lied intentionally to slander these young boys and to seem himself the victim when it was he that approached and entered the personal space of the child until the teen left.  He used the momentum of attention to preach a political stance saying that indigenous people existed for "millennia" on this land with no walls.  Representative Adam Schiff took to Twitter to spread this "wisdom", but in respect to accurate history, a simple google search can find photos of hundreds of ancient ruins of border walls built by Native Americans that are still standing.

Lying Bull, Nathan Phillips, Never Served In Viet Nam, And Was Never "A Real Indian".  [W]ith video-recording devices ubiquitous today — and with incidents such as last Friday's Lincoln Memorial affair shot by multiple people from many angles — if there's no footage of something that allegedly happened there, it didn't happen, period.  What did happen was that Talking Bull (Nathan Phillips), a professional agitator and American Indian separatist, was given a forum in which to spew nonsensical ideas.  Here's a prime example:  "I heard them [the students] saying 'build the wall, build that wall,'" he said," as Vibe reported.  "This is indigenous land.  We're not supposed to have walls here.  Before anyone came here there were no walls...."  (Actually, the Indians built plenty of walls, as old ruins attest.

Native American Activist Nathan Phillips Never Served in Vietnam, But Raised Money By Saying He Did.  The Washington Post has had to issue yet another retraction after falsely claiming that far-left Native American activist Nathan Phillips served in the Vietnam War.  He didn't — but this lie was previously used to help raise money for a documentary about his life.  On Monday [1/21/2019], the Washington Post quietly issued a correction to their story about the activist, saying that while he served in the Marines, he was never deployed to Vietnam.

National Shrine confirms report that Native American activist allegedly tried to disrupt Mass.  Officials at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday [1/23/2019] confirmed earlier reports that a Native American rights activist led several dozen people in an attempt to enter the shrine during a Saturday evening Mass.  In a statement to Fox News on Wednesday, basilica officials said a Mass was being celebrated at 7 p.m. when Nathan Phillips and his group "attempted to enter the building while chanting and hitting drums."

Native American activist Nathan Phillips has violent criminal record and escaped from jail as teenager.  Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist who falsely accused Covington Catholic High School students of blocking him during a confrontation he initiated, has a criminal record — including assault and escape from jail — and appears to have misrepresented his military service.  Phillips, 63, suggested high school junior Nick Sandmann, the teenager at the center of the viral encounter after separate D.C. rallies, face expulsion for failing to "accept any responsibility" or apologize to Phillips publicly.  In his own teenage years and early 20s, Phillips, using his adoptive name Nathaniel R. Stanard, was charged with escaping from prison, assault, and several alcohol-related crimes, according to local news reports at the time from his hometown of Lincoln, Neb.

Nathan Phillips's Interview with CNN Is Full of Falsehoods, Inconsistencies, and Nonsense.  As I wrote on the home page today [1/22/2019], it's disturbing to see the left-wing hate that is still being directed at the Covington Catholic students — days after the initial framing of the story was thoroughly debunked.  Judging from the vitriolic online responses to my piece, it's apparent that many folks on the left are basing their understanding of the incident by still taking Nathan Phillips entirely at his word about the incident.  They credit his good intentions.  They credit his good faith.  And they credit his version of the story.  This is a grave mistake.

Breaking: Native American Activist Nathan Phillips Is a Poseur and Likely a Phony Vietnam War Veteran!  On Friday, a group of high school boys from Kentucky went to the Lincoln Memorial after attending the March For Life.  While standing at the memorial a Native American activist, Nathan Phillips, approached the boys and started harassing them.  Phillips, reportedly a Vietnam veteran, got up in one boy's face and started screaming and beating his drum inches from the boy's face.  Phillips also has a history of setting up similar incidents.  According to one of the high school boys who was present, a group of black men were taunting the Trump supporters, calling them "shooters" and "crackers" and said the white kids "had everything given to them by their parents."  According to a witness, it was at this point that a Native American man showed up "out of nowhere" and began drumming in the high school kid's face.

Nathan Phillips Is Not A Vietnam War Veteran But Does He Have A Richard Blumenthal Problem?  During his 2010 run for the Senate, then Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was revealed to have lied about serving in Vietnam.  Over the years, Blumenthal had made much of his service in Vietnam as a Marine but it was revealed that not only had Blumenthal not served in Vietnam, his USMC service was limited to being a member of the Marine Corps Reserve which, along with his college deferments, kept him out of Vietnam.  Let me pause here of a moment.  I don't have any huge objection to men who grew up in the 1960s using the system to avoid being drafted any more than I object to people using an accountant to minimize their tax liability. [...] Where my tolerance ends is when you say you served in combat.  That brings me to Nathan Phillips.  Phillips is the guy who manufactured a controversy over the weekend (again).

Exposed: Native Man Who Harassed Catholic Teens Protested at Trump Hotel in D.C., Among Other Leftist Activism.  Nathan Phillips, the Native American man at the center of a controversy involving Covington Catholic High School students, has a history of left-wing and anti-Trump activism, and has been previously featured in the media for such activism. [...] The media has portrayed Phillips as the victim of "racist" harassment by the young boys, but the narrative quickly fell apart when a video emerged showing the full interaction between Phillips and Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann.  It is clear that Phillips and his gang approached the boys first.

Stolen Valor at its Finest.  Nathan Phillips likes to bang his drum and moan.  He also likes to lie about his service in Vietnam.

Nathan Phillips Tried to Disrupt Catholic Mass by Chanting, Beating Drum.  A group of Native American activists, led by native elder Nathan Phillips, allegedly tried to enter a Catholic church in Washington, DC, on Saturday while chanting and banging on their drums.  Nathan Phillips, along with about twenty other activists, tried to disrupt a January 19th evening Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, while chanting and banging on their drums, according to the Catholic News Agency (CNA).

Security At D.C. Catholic Church Forced To LOCK Doors To Keep Nathan Phillips From Busting Into Mass With Drums On Eve Of Confrontation With Boys.  Today is not a good day for Native American bully Nathan Phillips.  On Monday, Phillips' story about being threatened by a group of teenage Catholic boys waiting for their school bus to pick them up and take them home from the March for Life, fell apart after video evidence proved it was all a lie.  Today [1/22/2019], Phillip's story about being a U.S. Marine Recon Ranger fell apart today, when it was discovered that again, he lied.  Now, the Catholic News Agency is reporting that night, Phillips and his group of leftist agitators who confronted the group of young Covington Catholic High School boys, were stopped by security at the Washington D.C Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and were stopped from entering and disrupting their evening mass.

Nathan Phillips' DD-214 Released — And It Shows He's Not Quite What He Claims.  While many mainstream news outlets have been pathologically fixed on researching everything having to do with Covington Catholic High School and The Covington Kids, precious few (I'd wager none) have devoted any resources to researching anything regarding Nathan Phillips' military service or anything else about him.  On Monday Streiff reported that it was mathematically impossible that Phillips served in the Vietnam war, but Phillips' DD-214 wasn't publicly available.  Late Tuesday [1/22/2019], that changed.  Retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley shared Nathan Phillips' (a/k/a Nathan Stanard) DD-214, which he'd acquired through a FOIA request.

Native American activist Nathan Phillips has a criminal record.  Native American activist Nathan Phillips, whose confrontation with a Kentucky high school student went viral last week, has a criminal record, including assault and escape from prison, according to a report.  The 64-year-old Omaha Nation elder was captured on video facing off against a group of students from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.  When he was a teen and in his early 20s, Phillips was charged with escaping, assault and various alcohol-related crimes, according to the Washington Examiner, which cited news reports from his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Lawsuits:

4 News Orgs File Motion To Toss Lawsuits From Nick Sandmann.  They Were All Denied, Lawyer Says.  The attorney representing former Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann in his defamation lawsuits against media organizations that smeared him last year announced on Thursday [10/1/2020] that four news organizations filed motions to dismiss the lawsuits and that all four requests were denied. [...] The lawsuits center around false media reports regarding an interaction that Sandmann had with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips that falsely portrayed Sandmann as an aggressor.

Nick Sandmann Puts on His MAGA Hat Again at RNC, Defies 'Cancel Culture'.  Nicholas Sandmann, the MAGA-hat-wearing high school student who was defamed by the mainstream media at the March for Life in 2019, put on his famous hat again at the RNC, praising President Donald Trump for opposing "cancel culture."  Sandmann, who sued CNN and the Washington Post for smearing him as a racist, when in fact he was attacked by radical left-wing activists, told his own story, in full, to a national audience.  (CNN and the Post settled the lawsuits earlier this year.)

Nick Sandmann speaks at RNC and CNN analyst (and former Clinton press secretary) takes the bait.  The Trump derangement syndrome pandemic continues to rage through the CNN staff, with a dangerous confirmed case popping up last night in the Twitter feed of Joe Lockhart, CNN analyst and former Bill Clinton press secretary.  Most AT readers are familiar with the fact that CNN settled a $250-million lawsuit that superlawyer Lin Wood brought against the network on Nick Sandmann's behalf, based on that network's libel of him following his encounter with left-wing activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial.  At the RNC last night, Nick delivered a 5-minute account of his experience, well worth your time if you did not happen to see it.  [Video clip]

New Lawsuits Coming For CNN, WaPo Over Breach Of Contract With Sandmann Settlements?  The first rule of Settlement Club is that you don't talk about Settlement Club.  And the second rule of Settlement Club — [indeed], the first fifty rules of Settlement Club is that you don't talk about settlements in lawsuits with mutual gag rules in place.  Apparently that didn't sink in at CNN or the Washington Post after both media outlets decided to quietly end the litigation brought by Nicholas Sandmann.  Their employees went on social media attempting to spin the settlement and suggest that Sandmann only got a minimal payment to shut him up.  Big mistake, Sandmann attorney Lin Wood made clear almost immediately.  "I know how to deal with liars," Wood tweeted, and warned that new lawsuits would be filed unless "heads rolled" at both outlets.

CNN's Stelter accused of breaching network's confidentiality agreement with Sandmann: 'May cost him his job'.  CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter may have landed himself in hot water, according to the attorney of Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann.  Last week, Sandmann announced that The Washington Post settled the $250 million defamation lawsuit he filed over its botched coverage of a viral confrontation with a Native American elder that had portrayed the Kentucky teen as the aggressor.  This followed the multi-million dollar settlement CNN made with the teenager back in January.  However, Sandmann's attorney Lin Wood spotted a retweet from Stelter of a tweet written by attorney Mark Zaid, who speculated about how much money the teen walked away with from the settlement.  "Those with zero legal experience (as far as I can tell) should not be conjecturing on lawsuits they know nothing about.  What kind of journalism is that?" Zaid asked.

Nick Sandmann Wasn't Supposed to Survive.  He Was Meant to End Up Like Mike Adams.  That's what the media mob wanted.  They as good as admitted it.  When powerful reporters call a young man's face "the most punchable in America," that's what they mean.  When columnists and activists propose "doxing" him, contacting every college he ever applies to, or job he tries to get, that's what they mean.  When Sandmann's own Catholic bishop threw him to the wolves, when his school suspended him, when "conservative" columnists at National Review and other venues denounced him as "bigoted," they were writing him off for life.  They were branding him on his face with the most destructive charge available in America.  The charge that's now burning cities and getting Trump supporters murdered.  All for what crime, exactly?  For waiting for a bus after a pro-life demonstration.  And smiling while white.

The Washington Post Settles With Nicholas Sandmann.  The Washington Post settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a teenager Nicholas Sandmann who was falsely labeled a racist who aggressively attacked an elderly Native American activist during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial with his high school class.  The false account of the incident was widely circulated in the media.  He was attacked on networks like MSNBC and CNN as well as in newspapers like the Post.  He sued the Washington Post for $250 million but the settlement terms were not disclosed.  Sandmann, then 16, was accused by CNN and other outlets of harassing activist Nathan Phillips.  The students denied the accusation but many in the media ran with the attacks on the high school student as a racist Trump supporter abusing an elderly Native American.  Videotaped showed it was the Covington students who were being harassed.

Washington Post settles Nicholas Sandmann defamation lawsuit in Covington Catholic High School controversy.  The Washington Post is the latest news organization to settle a defamation lawsuit launched by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann over its botched coverage of a viral confrontation with a Native American elder that had portrayed the Kentucky teen as the aggressor.  Sandmann announced the victory on Twitter.

Washington Post settles $250M suit with Covington teen Nick Sandmann.  The Washington Post on Friday [7/24/2020] agreed to settle a monster $250 million lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann over its botched coverage of his 2019 encounter with a Native American elder.  Sandmann declared the victory in a tweet on his 18th birthday.  It's unclear how much the newspaper settled for.  "On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post.  Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit," he wrote.

Nick Sandmann's Lawyers Filing Lawsuits Against Five More Media Companies.  Lawyers for Covington Catholic High School senior Nick Sandmann reportedly will file lawsuits against five additional media companies this week for smearing Sandmann last year.  Sandmann's lawyers submitted a status report with the U.S. District Court in Covington last week that showed that "they intend to file complaints against Gannett, ABC, CBS, The New York Times and Rolling Stone before March 9," Fox 19 reported.

Media Lawyer Explains Why CNN Settlement in Libel Case Is a Big Deal.  Will media outlets learn the right lessons after CNN settled in a lawsuit with Nick Sandmann, the MAGA-hat wearing teen who became the center of a widely botched, viral story?  "No.  They don't learn."  That was the answer from Charles Glasser, a lawyer who teaches media ethics and law at New York University and the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, in an interview with The Daily Signal.

'Richard Jewell,' Nicholas Sandmann and the media mob.  While watching Clint Eastwood's great new film "Richard Jewell," about the heroic security guard of the Atlanta Olympics who saved lives only to be savaged by the media mob, I thought about another innocent.  Nicholas Sandmann, the kid from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.  He suffered the same kind of agony and humiliation.  It was only a year ago that Sandmann was all over the news, branded as a hateful racist in a MAGA hat.  The media got it wrong.  Sandmann was in the news again the other day, after CNN settled that $275 million libel suit he filed.  Terms were not disclosed.  Jewell and Sandmann were each publicly stripped of their honor through no fault of their own.

Following CNN-Sandmann settlement, beef erupts between Covington students' lawyers.  CNN's decision to settle a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann has resulted in a bizarre feud between some of the Covington students' high-powered attorneys.  The settlement between CNN and Sandmann has reignited another lawsuit, filed last year by attorney Robert Barnes, who represents 10 Covington students, but not Sandmann.

Covington Boys Sue Elizabeth Warren, Kathy Griffin and CNN Host Who Called Nick Sandmann's Face "Punchable".  Just one day after CNN settled with pro-life teen Nick Sandmann for smearing his name, the Covington students are getting attention about their own lawsuit against other abortion advocates and liberal media types who lied about him and his friends.  The lawsuit targets Reza Aslan, the disgraced former CNN commentator who called Nick's face "punchable" in a tweet that he finally deleted yesterday after getting served with the lawsuit.  Aslan's tweet from January 19, 2019 features the now viral image of Sandmann and asks his followers:  "Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's?"

Reza Aslan's 'Punchable Face' Tweet Targeting Covington Kid Could Soon Become Expensive.  Lawyer Robert Barnes sued lefty media personality Reza Aslan last year for a minimum of $135,000 in damages over his January 2019 tweet describing a Covington Catholic High School student's face as "punchable," and is hoping that he will be served with the lawsuit in the near future.  Aslan's tweet — which had over 20,000 "likes" — featured an image of Nicholas Sandmann smiling at Native American activist Nathan Phillips and asks the question:  "Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's?"

Reza Aslan to Face the Music For Calling Nick Sandmann's Face 'Punchable' In Now-Deleted Tweet.  One day after news broke that CNN settled a defamation lawsuit on behalf of Covington Catholic teen Nick Sandmann, Robert Barnes announced he had sued author, producer, and show host Reza Aslan for Aslan's tweet describing Sandmann's face as "punchable."  The lawsuit, which Barnes provided to PJ Media, would slap Aslan with a minimum of $135,000 in damages.  When video of Sandmann supposedly smirking at a Native American man outside the March for Life went viral last year, Aslan infamously tweeted, "Honest question.  Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's?"  Nearly exactly one year after posting the tweet, Aslan had finally deleted it on Wednesday [1/8/2020].

CNN's Covington Settlement Shows Danger Of Agenda-Based Reporting.  News organizations intent on framing news events to meet their ideological predispositions should carefully consider the legal fallout from last year's coverage of the Covington Catholic high school students.  It is risky to force news reporting into partisan sociopolitical templates.  CNN has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed earlier this year by Nicholas Sandmann, the high school student who became the focal point of news coverage when a Native American demonstrator encountered Sandmann and his classmates in Washington, D.C. That coverage, by CNN and other major news outlets, was extensive and sensational, sending the nation into an unnecessary uproar.  Sandmann was originally characterized by journalists as the aggressor in the situation, but video that surfaced later indicated that Sandmann and his classmates were generally restrained in handling the matter.  Sandmann sued CNN for its mischaracterization of his role, which his attorneys said led to emotional distress, damage to Sandmann's reputation, on-line harassment and unwanted national criticism.

CNN settles lawsuit with Nick Sandmann.  CNN agreed Tuesday [1/7/2020] to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann.  The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington, Kentucky.  Sandmann's lawsuit sought $800 million from CNN, the Washington Post and NBC Universal.  Trial dates are still not set for Sandmann's lawsuit against NBC Universal and the Washington Post.

CNN Settles Lawsuit with Covington Catholic Student Nick Sandmann.  CNN has agreed to settle a $275 million lawsuit brought by Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann over the network's coverage of a confrontation involving himself and his classmates and a Native American man during a school trip to Washington, DC, last year, FOX 19 reported Tuesday [1/7/2020].

All three Nicholas Sandmann lawsuits to go forward — WaPo, CNN, NBC.  [Scroll down]  As can be seen, in all three cases the only surviving claim is as to the allegation that Sandmann blocked Phillips.  That's a narrow issue on the surface, but it's an issue Sandmann's lawyers could drive a truck through because they get discovery of the entire news process that led up to the reporting — and who knows what they might find that would allow for trying to reinstate the other claims.

All Three Nicholas Sandman Lawsuits Against Liberal Media move Forward:  WaPo, CNN, NBC.  Federal Judge William Bertelsman reopened the $250 million defamation case filed by Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann against the Washington Post in late October.  Sixteen-year-old Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann was smeared and maligned by the liberal press after he was harassed in Washington DC following the March for Life.  The Washington Post accused the teen of blocking and impeding Nathan Phillips as the native American elder was harassing the Catholic boys in Trump hats.  It was all a lie and the Washington Post was one of the leading liberal outlets attacking the young Catholic boys.

Covington Catholic teen's $275 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal can proceed, judge rules.  A federal judge ruled Thursday that Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann's $275 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal may proceed on limited grounds, as he had with similar cases against The Washington Post and CNN.  U.S. District Court Judge William Bertelsman dismissed parts of the lawsuit while allowing discovery on allegations that the network's coverage defamed the teen by reporting that he "blocked" Native American elder Nathan Phillips in a Jan. 18 encounter at the Lincoln Memorial.  "[T]he court finds that the statements that plaintiff 'blocked' Phillips or did not allow him to retreat, if false, meet the test of being libelous per se under the definition quoted above," said Judge Bertelsman in his order.

KY Judge Drops Covington Kids' Libel Lawsuit Against Elizabeth Warren on Grounds of 'Sovereign Immunity'.  A Kentucky judge on Thursday [11/7/2019] dismissed a defamation lawsuit against presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on grounds of sovereign immunity, a doctrine that states "the U.S. government or those acting on its behalf may not be sued without its consent." [...] The lawsuit was filed by eight Covington Catholic High School students after the 2020 presidential contender smeared them on Twitter.

The Washington Post's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.  On Monday [10/28/2019], the judge who previously threw out Covington Catholic teen Nick Sandmann's $250 million defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post reversed course and reinstated the case after reviewing an amended complaint.  The Post, which thought it was off the hook for its misreporting, will now enter the discovery phase, where it will likely be forced to hand over internal communications on its reporting of Sandmann and his classmates at the March for Life in January.

Judge Reverses Course On Covington Catholic Student Nick Sandmann's Lawsuit Against The Washington Post.  A federal judge in Kentucky reopened Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann's $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Monday [10/28/2019] after having previously dismissed it over the summer.  "After reviewing an amended complaint, Judge William Bertelsman ordered Monday that the case could enter the discovery phase and hence a portion of the lawsuit against the newspaper could continue," the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Judge reopens Covington Catholic teen's $250 million lawsuit against Washington Post.  A federal judge in Kentucky has reopened the $250 million defamation case filed by a Covington Catholic student against The Washington Post after dismissing it in July, allowing the lawsuit to proceed but narrowing its focus.  U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman agreed to permit discovery on three of 33 allegedly libelous statements in The Post's coverage of the Jan. 18 incident pertaining to teenager Nicholas Sandmann.  The Post has insisted that its reporting was fair and accurate.  All three flagged statements from the newspaper's coverage refer to Omaha Nation elder Nathan Phillips being blocked or impeded by Nicholas, a student at Covington Catholic High School, during their viral encounter at the Lincoln Memorial stairs.

Judge Reverses Ruling, Allows Covington Catholic's Nick Sandmann to Sue Washington Post for Defamation.  A federal judge has reversed his previous ruling and allowed Covington Catholic pro-life student Nick Sandmann to proceed with his defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post. [...] Judge William O. Bertelsman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, a Jimmy Carter appointee, partially reversed his previous ruling in which he dismissed Sandmann's $275 million lawsuit.  The reversal will permit the Covington student's lawsuit to proceed, reported LifeSiteNews.

Sandmann in the Gears.  Students of ancient history may recall the victimization of Nicholas Sandmann by the Washington Post and other organs of the mainstream media this past January.  Working from their reports, social media amplified the wrongs committed against Sandmann by the mainstream media.  In due course Sandmann filed defamation lawsuits against the Washington Post and others.  Our own comments on the lawsuit against the Post focused on the constitutional protection afforded defamation of public figures.  As it turns out, (senior) Judge Bertelsman dismissed the lawsuit on other grounds, [...]

Covington Catholic High School students file lawsuits against dozens of public figures.  Attorneys for the Covington Catholic high school teens accused of harassing a Native-American protester on Capitol Hill back in January have filed a new defamation lawsuit against several of their most well-known Twitter detractors.  Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman and CNN correspondent Ana Navarro were among 12 defendants named in the new suit, which seeks a maximum payout of $600,000 ($50,000 per defendant).

Nicholas Sandmann Was Denied the Justice He Deserves.  A Jimmy Carter-appointed federal district court judge in Kentucky on Friday dismissed Nicholas Sandmann's defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post.  The Covington Catholic High School student's two other suits against CNN and NBC remain active, however.  Recall that Sandmann became Public Enemy No. 1 after video surfaced of him perpetrating a heinous crime on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial the day after the 2019 March for Life:  standing while white and MAGA-hatted.  Even worse, he appeared to smile as Nathan Phillips, a Native American adult who approached Sandmann and his friends, loudly banged a drum in Sandmann's face.

The Covington Catholic Teen Lost His First Court Battle, But Will Probably Win His Next.  On Friday [7/26/2019], a federal judge in Kentucky tossed Nicholas Sandmann's defamation case against the Washington Post.  Sandmann, the Covington Catholic student smeared by the Post and many other outlets earlier this year as a smirking, MAGA-hat-wearing racist who had blocked Native American elder Nathan Phillips's path, promises an appeal.  On appeal, Sandmann is likely to win.

$250 million Sandmann lawsuit against Washington Post dismissed by federal judge.  The $250 million lawsuit filed by Nick Sandmann against the Washington Post has been dismissed by a federal judge.  William Bertelsman, who heard oral arguments in the case earlier this month, issued the ruling Friday [7/26/2019].  Nick and his attorneys, Todd McMurtry and L. Lin Wood, alleged that the gist of The Washington Post's first article conveyed that Nick had assaulted or physically intimidated Nathan Phillips, engaged in racist conduct, and engaged in taunts.  But, Bertelsman wrote, "this is not supported by the plain language in the article, which states none of these things."

Federal judge tosses March for Life attendee's $25M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post.  A federal judge dismissed Friday [7/26/2019] the $25 million defamation lawsuit filed against the Washington Post by Kentucky teen Nicholas Sandmann over the newspaper's coverage of his viral encounter with an elderly Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial.  Senior U.S. District Court Judge William O. Bertelsman found that activist Nathan Phillips may have been wrong when he said he was "blocked" by the teen and not allowed to "retreat," but that such statements represented opinion protected by the First Amendment.  "And The Post is not liable for publishing these opinions, for the reasons discussed in this Opinion," said the 36-page ruling.

Sandmann Lawsuit:  Eight-Day NBC Smear Job Worth $275M Judgement.  Nicholas Sandmann, the victim of a coast-to-coast Two Minutes Hate after a confrontation with a "Native American elder," filed a third defamation lawsuit this week, this time against NBC Universal.  Sandman, who sued the Washington Post in February and CNN in March, seeks $275 million from the hard-left, anti-Trump network for myriad falsehoods it broadcast on television and published online about events at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18.  Like the other lawsuits, this one takes apart the news organization's scandalously biased coverage piece-by-piece.

Covington Catholic teen Nick Sandmann sues NBC for $275 million.  Attorneys for Nicholas Sandmann filed a $275 million lawsuit Wednesday against NBCUniversal over its coverage of the Kentucky teen, accusing the network of creating a "false narrative" driven by its "anti-Trump agenda."  The lawsuit, the third filed by the Sandmann attorneys against major media outlets, alleged that NBC targeted the Covington Catholic High School student in its reporting on his Jan. 18 encounter with Native American activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial.  "NBCUniversal created a false narrative by portraying the 'confrontation' as a 'hate crime' committed by Nicholas," said the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Washington Post Trying To Dismiss Lawsuit From Nick Sandmann.  In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, lawyers for The Washington Post have filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit from the family of Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann, who was smeared by the media as a racist after a clip of him standing silently while a Native American man beat a drum in his face was shared online. [...] Covington Catholic and the Covington diocese eventually apologized to Sandmann and his fellow students for rushing to judgment.  Sandmann's attorney also plans to sue Phillips and has filed a $275 million lawsuit against CNN for its biased coverage of the incident.

CNN defends its Covington Catholic coverage after being hit with $275 million lawsuit.  CNN is defending its reporting after being sued by the Covington Catholic High School teen at the center of January's viral incident, insisting that the network "reported on a newsworthy event" and was careful to "report on additional facts as they developed."  In its first public acknowledgment of the legal action, CNN posted a four-paragraph article on its website that said the network was "reviewing the lawsuit," referring to student Nicholas Sandmann's defamation complaint filed March 12 seeking $275 million for "false, vicious attacks."

Blankenship Is Right:  Sue the Mainstream Media Out of Existence.  [Scroll down]  And our concern shouldn't be limited just to these cases: consider the reckless endangerment of the very lives and careers of the Covington Catholic children by the mainstream media.  Prominent celebrities with huge online followings called for the names, addresses, and deaths of these young boys, based on the easily-disproven narrative that they shouted abuse and even smirked at a defenseless Native-American "elder" and Vietnam War "veteran."  How can a white male Christian American feel safe attending political events in public — in this case, the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. — without worrying about the mainstream media completely distorting their actions and directing a violent mob their way, howling for their blood online and in real life?

Sandmann, family sue CNN for $275M in Covington Catholic controversy.  A lawsuit worth $275 million was filed against CNN on Tuesday [3/12/2019] over the network's alleged "vicious" attack against Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann.  The lawsuit, filed just after 3 p.m. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, claims that CNN "elevated false, heinous accusations of racist conduct" against Sandmann and failed to adhere to "well-established journalistic standards and ethics."

Covington Catholic Student Nicholas Sandmann's Lawyer: 'They Messed With the Wrong Kid'.  Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann's legal team released a new video on Wednesday, amidst the preparation and filing of defamation lawsuits against major media companies and others.  Sandmann's legal team has been preparing defamation suit warning letters to a long list of celebrities, individual journalists, media outlets, and several Catholic dioceses for the alleged defamation of the teenager and his classmates involving a viral video from January.

Nick Sandmann Attorney:  We Will Sue CNN For More Than $250 Million.  Not long after the national media used Covington Catholic High School junior Nick Sandmann as the subject for Two Minute Hate and ritual dehumanization, the law firm engaged by the Sandmann family filed a $250 million lawsuit against one of the leaders of the lynch mob, the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post.

Covington teen moves ahead with $250M lawsuit against the Washington Post.  The Washington Post published a curious editor's note last week admitting it had made a series of bad mistakes in January when it falsely reported, based on unreliable social media posts, that a group of Covington Catholic High School student had harassed a Native American protester in the nation's capital.  Not good enough, say the attorneys for Nick Sandmann, the Covington student who was singled out more than any other during the height of the supposed scandal.

How Covington's Nick Sandmann could win his longshot defamation claim against the Washington Post.  Nicholas Sandmann is one of the Covington High School students caught in a media firestorm while attending the March for Life last month in Washington, D.C.  Now, he is pushing back.  This week, his lawyers filed a defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post for $250 million dollars — the amount that Jeff Bezos spent to buy the newspaper.  Does Sandmann have any chance of winning?  The short answer is "yes."  But it's not a sure thing.  He's taking on a defendant with very deep pockets and absolutely no incentive to settle.

Nick Sandmann Files $250 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against The Washington Post.  The $250 million is divided into one part compensatory damages and four parts punitive damages.  If you're wondering what sort of profession a 16-year-old might be eyeing such that he may conceivably incur $50 million in lost compensation from all this, you should understand that that figure is symbolic:  It's "the amount Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, paid in cash for the Post when his company, Nash Holdings, purchased the newspaper in 2013," per the complaint posted on Sandmann's lawyers' website, which you can read in full [elsew]here.

Can Nick Sandmann Save the First Amendment?  Nick Sandmann is back in the news, literally with a vengeance.  If there is anyone in the galaxy who doesn't recognize the name, this is the high school teen viciously maligned by the media after a leftwing activist with a film crew attempted to provoke a confrontation with him as he waited for a bus near the Lincoln Memorial.  Having committed the crimes of wearing a red MAGA cap and smiling, Sandmann was vilified by the media as a smug beneficiary of "white privilege" who had bullied a Native American veteran.  This turned out to be a lie, of course.  Consequently, Sandmann's parents are suing the Washington Post for $250 million pursuant to its participation in a "modern-day form of McCarthyism" and enthusiastically joining "a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child."  The pretext for this outrage was a deceptively edited video suggesting that Sandmann was the aggressor in the "confrontation" with alleged Vietnam veteran Nathan Phillips.  The full video revealed that the former was, in fact, the victim.

Covington High student's legal team sues Washington Post.  Attorneys representing the Kentucky high school student involved in a confrontation that went viral on social media last month announced Tuesday that they were suing The Washington Post for $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages.  The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Kentucky, accused The Post of practicing "a modern-day form of McCarthyism" by targeting Nicholas Sandmann and "using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles ... to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president."

Covington Student's Attorney Lin Wood:  We Have Two Years To File More Charges for Nick Sandmann.  Lin Wood, the high-profile attorney representing Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann, filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Washington Post for defamation on Tuesday.  The lawsuit claims that the paper "vilified" the student that was seen in a viral video being confronted by far-left activist Nathan Phillips because of the fact that he is white.

Nick Sandmann's Lawyers File Massive Lawsuit Against The Washington Post.  Lawyers representing Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann filed a massive $250 million lawsuit against The Washington Post on Tuesday [2/19/2019] and warned, "this is only the beginning." [...] The lawsuit accuses The Washington Post of targeting Sandmann "because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red 'Make America Great Again' souvenir cap on a school field trip to the January 18 March for Life in Washington, D.C. when he was unexpectedly and suddenly confronted by Nathan Phillips ('Phillips'), a known Native American activist, who beat a drum and sang loudly within inches of his face ('the January 18 incident')."

Maligned MAGA Hat Teen Sues Washington Post for $250 Million.  Lawyers for Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann have filed a lawsuit against the Washington Post seeking $250 million in both compensatory and punitive damages. [...] In a statement on their website, attorneys L. Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry said they "will continue to bring wrongdoers before the court to seek damages in compensation for the harm so many have done to the Sandmann family.  This is only the beginning."

Donald Trump Cheers on Covington Student Suing Washington Post.  President Donald Trump on Wednesday supported Covington High School student Nick Sandmann and his lawyers for suing the Washington Post.  "Go get them, Nick," Trump wrote on Twitter.  "Fake News!"  Trump quoted the lawsuit which said the Post "ignored basic journalistic standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump."  The lawsuit is seeking $250 million in damages, accusing the Post of targeting and bullying Sandmann and his peers for wearing a Trump campaign Make America Great Again hats during a school trip for the March for Life.

Why the Washington Post has got to be worried about the quarter billion-dollar defamation lawsuit.  Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world and owner of the Washington Post, is about to encounter Kentucky justice, and I suspect he is not going to be happy with it.  The parents of Nick Sandmann chose well in hiring renowned lawyer L. Lin Wood, who won over $5 million from NBC over its coverage of Richard Jewell during the Olympic Park bombing incident.  Wood and associated counsel launched a lawsuit in federal court in Covington, Kentucky (the Eastern District of Kentucky, Northern Division).  According to the Diocese of Covington, 18% of the area's population is Catholic.  The Eastern District Court of Kentucky is within the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Cincinnati, generally regarded as the most conservative major metropolitan area in the United States.

Nick Sandmann's lawyer confirms drum-beating Nathan Phillips 'will be sued' over viral incident.  Native American activist Nathan Phillips will be held to account for the "lies and false accusations" he made about Covington High School student Nick Sandmann, the 16-year-old boy who found himself at the center of major controversy for doing little more than smiling.  That's according to Lin Wood, an Atlanta-based lawyer representing Sandmann and his parents, who told LifeSiteNews that Phillips "will be sued" for his "well documented" actions against the MAGA hat-wearing high school student and his classmates.

The Biggest Threat To Press Freedom Is The Media Itself.  While the outrage over the Covington high school kids in MAGA hats may have blown over online, the story is far from over. [...] On Monday [2/4/2019], Sandmann's legal team told the Cincinnati Enquirer that more than 50 letters had been sent to various organizations and people that are likely to precede defamation and libel lawsuits. [...] Further, the people wronged by the media in the Covington case were not public figures who have to clear a high legal bar of proving actual malice.  They were, in fact, children. [...] Further, 16-year-old Sandmann doesn't begin to meet any reasonable definition of a "public figure," so the basic protection against libel and defamation that so many in the media bank on doesn't apply here.

Covington Catholic Teen's Lawyer:  Hundreds in Media Will 'Pay a High Price' for Defamation.  One of the attorneys representing Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann and his family says he's confident that the media entities that smeared the 16-year-old boy will eventually be brought to justice in a Covington, Ky., courtroom.  "We clearly think that we're going to be able to get these issues in front of a jury, and frankly, that jury is most likely to be here in Covington Kentucky," said Sandmann family attorney Todd McMurtry Thursday.  He added, "And this whole community knows what happened."  McMurtry spoke with Fox News Radio's Todd Starnes by phone, saying he and co-counsel L. Lin Wood will be taking "pretty strenuous legal action" against potentially hundreds of media entities to make right some of the wrongs that have forced the family into hiding and damaged the boy's reputation.

Covington Catholic teen sues 54 news outlets, lawmakers and celebrities.  Last month's incident involving the boys from Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School at the Lincoln Memorial may be over — but the legal battle has just begun.  Attorneys for Covington junior Nick Sandmann made a splash this week when they sent letters to 54 news outlets, lawmakers, celebrities, media figures and Catholic institutions asking them to preserve information related to the episode and warning of a possible lawsuit.  "There was a rush by the media to believe what it wanted to believe versus what actually happened," attorney Todd McMurtry told The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Dozens of Journalists About to be Sued Over Their Libelous Covington Coverage.  Dozens of prominent journalists are on their way to being sued for defamation according to Fox News.  On FNC's America's Newsroom Tuesday [2/5/2019], Doug McKelway reported that these journalists from just about every liberal outlet imaginable, are receiving preservation letters from Covington student Nick Sandmann's lawyer.  The letters order them to not destroy any reports or correspondences related to their coverage of the incident which smeared the teens as racists.

The truth in 15 minutes.  The family of Nick Sandmann has retained the services of attorney Lin Wood to rectify the damage done to the young Mr. Sandmann's reputation following flawed reports of the encounter with Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial last month.  Among those who falsely disparaged the young Mr. Sandmann is Minnesota's own Fifth District Rep. Ilhan Omar, though you would never know it if you get your news from the Star Tribune.

Covington Student Nick Sandmann's Lawyers Send Preservation Letters to Media, Celebrities.  Lawyers for Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann and his family have sent preservation letters to media and celebrities.  These letters hint at possible libel and defamation lawsuits due to the treatment Sandmann received from these entities after a short video went viral of him on the Lincoln Memorial with Native Americans.

Lawyers for Nick Sandmann Send Over 50 Letters to Media Organizations, Celebrities: 'They Know They Crossed the Line'.  The attorneys that are representing the Covington Catholic High School student who went viral after engaging in a confrontation with a Native American have sent over 50 letters to media outlets, Catholic organizations, celebrities and individuals to begin the first steps to possible libel and defamation lawsuits.

Nick Sandmann's lawyers are preparing mass of libel, defamation lawsuits.  Here's who they're targeting..  Just two weeks ago, Nick Sandmann's face was plastered across every corner of the internet after the mainstream media portrayed him as the face of a hateful group of entitled Catholic high school students who mocked a Native American man.  As it turned out, the media had jumped to conclusions, resulting in countless apologies, retractions, and even many who did not relent, still somehow managing to blame the teenagers for causing a scene at the Lincoln Monument on the same day as this year's March for Life.  Since then, Sandmann's lawyers have been working overtime to ensure he and his family receive justice for being widely defamed.

Sue the Bastards!  Liberals, mostly but not exclusively — i.e., the Associated Press — on Twitter, have lied about the trivial encounter between a group of aggressive left-wing activists and some kids from Covington Catholic high school who attended the March For Life.  The misrepresentation was one of the more egregious incidents of media lies that we have seen in recent years, as I wrote [elsew]here.  So, what has happened since?  The Associated Press has refused to correct its lies.  Liberals have threatened the families of the kids from Covington Catholic with death.  Liberals have written to colleges, urging them to reject any applications from Covington Catholic students.  Liberals have explicitly urged that the lives of the kids who innocently attended the March For Life be destroyed.  Twitter has had no problem with tweets calling for violence, as long as the violence is directed against conservative teenagers.  Where do you go when the whole world seems to be against you?  You hire a lawyer.  Which is what some of the Covington kids' families reportedly have done.

Attorney Robert Barnes Gives Covington Smear Merchants 48 Hours to Retract Libel and Slander.  Attorney Robert Barnes explains to 'Fox & Friends' that any 'false statements' made about the students needs to be retracted and corrected within 48 hours or the subjects who targeted the Covington High School students will face lawsuits.  Mr. Barnes explains the specific laws that apply to minors; the process for libel damages under the current circumstances; and further outlines he is providing his legal services free of charge in order to stop malicious smears.

Lawyer for Covington Catholic HS Families Threatens Lawsuits Against Media Unless They Retract False Stories.  Thanks to the sloppy, one-sided reporting of the malicious, agenda-driven media, a group of Catholic high school teenagers and their families have become the subjects of threats and harassment from a hateful online outrage mob.  Their only sins:  Being white, Catholic, and supporters of the president.  The full story has emerged in the wake of the fake news blitzkrieg over the weekend, and the media outlets that spread defamatory smears against the kids are now being warned to correct and retract their stories or face a lawsuit.  Contrary to the media's malicious narrative, the kids were not racist rednecks mobbing a Native American elder with hateful slurs.  It was quite the opposite.

Lawyer For Covington Kids Threatens To Sue NYT For 'Obvious Libel'; People Line Up To Help.  The blowback from the egregiously irresponsible reporting of most mainstream media outlets about the context-less viral video of the boys from Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School "harassing" and "threatening" a Native American protester could include some legal headaches for some of the reporters and outlets.  In a tweet that's made headlines, Robert Barnes, a trial lawyer based in Los Angeles, issued an unequivocal warning to the New York Times' Maggie Haberman about her report on the Covington kids:  "I will represent the kids for free if they want to sue @maggieNYT for obvious libel."

Libels of and threats to Covington Kids will face Kentucky justice.  The ongoing campaign of hate against children from Kentucky guilty of being Catholic, being (mostly) white, and wearing MAGA caps will not end until there are legal consequences.  Fortunately, the wheels of justice already are turning in Kentucky, albeit at a pace that is frustrating to those who operate at internet speed.  But the prospect of Kentuckian jurors judging those who libel or threaten their children is delightful.  There are two separate avenues available, and both are being explored by people ready and willing to act.

Sandmann Family Hires Famed Libel Lawyer.  Famed libel attorney Lin Wood announced Thursday [1/24/2019] that he would be representing Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School junior currently at the center of a media firestorm.  Wood [...] has made a name for himself taking on media on behalf of those who believe they have been unfairly characterized.

Nicholas Sandmann's Family Makes Major Move Against Media After Being Smeared.  The family of 16-year-old Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann has hired a high-powered lawyer who specializes in going after media organizations for libel and slander. [...] The family made the announcement in a statement released by the Hemmer DeFrank Wessels law firm, The Enquirer reported.

Yeah, The Covington Kids Have A Case.  [Scroll down]  The first question is who do you sue?  Nathan Phillips?  I'm guessing he's not a particularly deep pocket.  Plus, he's just another fringie activist guy.  People are annoyed with him now; you sue him and you look like you are picking on a sad old man.  Sue Twitter, for letting those poisonous lies proliferate?  That's challenging, for several reasons.  But while it is awful in many situations, here its role was mostly as a forum.  A forum for garbage, but a forum nonetheless.  Yeah, the hypocrisy of allowing liberal blue checks to spread their murder fantasies unimpeded while banning conservatives for innocuous comments is galling, that's not the real issue here.  The real issue is the whipping up of a bloodthirsty frenzy against these kids based on what people knew were lies.

Nick Sandmann:

University Professor Threatens to 'Document' Nick Sandmann's Behavior on Campus, Calls His Beliefs 'Atrocious and Uninformed'.  A university professor posted a public screed against conservative hero Nick Sandmann on Facebook before backtracking after being called out for bias.  The exchange began after a left-wing activist wished that Transylvania University, the small Kentucky college that the former Covington Catholic student is now attending, would discriminate against Sandmann because of his conservative beliefs.

The Editor says...
Mr. Sandmann didn't get into the news because of his beliefs.  He became a public figure because of news media dishonesty and sensationalism.  If I were in his position, I would forego college altogether.  What is to be gained by submitting to four years of indoctrination and harrassment?

ACLU staffer fumes at university for accepting Nick Sandmann, report says.  An American Civil Liberties Union official in Kentucky chastised Transylvania University over the weekend for accepting Nicholas Sandmann as a student, calling the move a "stain" on the institution. [...] "Does anyone else think it's a bit of a stain on Transylvania University for accepting Nick Sandman [sic]?  I'm sure it's a "both sides" defense, but it's pretty counter to their mission and another instance of there not actually being equal sides to an issue," ACLU's Samuel Crankshaw said in a Facebook post, according to The National Review.  The comment has since been taken down.

Nick Sandmann Torches ACLU Associate, Professor Who Called Him 'Dangerous': 'I Will Not Be Canceled'.  Former Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann fired back Thursday at an ACLU associate and a college professor who warned that he was "dangerous" and a "provocateur" and should be watched closely when he begins his freshman year at Kentucky's Transylvania University, telling the pair that he is a "pro-life conservative Republican college student who won't let cancel culture silence me" in a Fox News op-ed.  On Wednesday [9/9/2020], The Daily Wire reported that Sandmann was the target of a two-pronged attack that began when a graduate of Transylvania University, who became an associate attorney for the ACLU, warned that Sandmann's presence at the school was a "bit of a stain" on its reputation and called Sandmann "a provocateur in training with no intention of learning" who "exists only to troll, intimidate and play victim."