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.
Biased, Unreliable Sources
Noting that NBC reaches more than 100 million homes, the lawsuit alleges that between January 19 and 27, the network “unleashed its vast corporate wealth, influence, and power” against Sandmann, a 16-year-old high-school kid.
In 2018, the lawsuit says, NBC reported net revenue of $94.5 billion and net income of $11.7 billion.
The barrage from NBC and the rest of the media came after a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites attacked the boys verbally while they awaited buses to leave the March for Life and head back to Covington, Kentucky.
The boys tried to drown out the black haters with school chants, but then “elder” Nathan Phillips, a military faker who falsely claimed he served with the Marines in Vietnam, approached Sandmann. Phillips beat a ceremonial drum and warbled eerie chants in Sandmann’s face. Sandmann did nothing wrong.
But then video that falsely depicted the scene went viral, and the leftist media pounced, calling Sandmann and his pals racists who verbally harassed and threatened the aging Indian wiseman, who was only at the mall, after all, to protest the white man’s theft of “native lands.”
NBC, the lawsuit alleges, attacked the Covington boy “by relying heavily on biased and unreliable sources without conducting any reasonable investigation of the circumstances.”
The vicious planetary smear job included at least 15 defamatory broadcasts, six defamatory online articles, and myriad tweets “falsely accusing” Sandmann and his high-school chums “of racists acts” and “engaging in racist conduct by instigating a threatening confrontation with [the Black Hebrew Israelites] … and subsequently instigating a threatening confrontation with Native Americans who were allegedly in the midst of prayer during the Indigenous Peoples March at the National Mall when Nicholas confronted them.”
NBC “painted the false picture” that Sandmann and his friends were a “big mob” and “surrounded these black kids,” and that the situation just “needed one little spark and that mob would have descended on those 4 guys and ripped them apart.”
And Phillips, of course was “scared.”
Even after the truth surfaced, the lawsuit alleges, “NBC failed and refused to acknowledge that Nicholas did nothing wrong and continued to perpetuate its false narrative for over one week.”
For eight days, the lawsuit explains, the network “recklessly disregarded the truth and falsely accused Nicholas of, among other things, “‘surrounding’ Phillips, ‘block[ing]’ Phillips’ path away from the ‘ugly mob,’ and chanting ‘build that wall,’ as he and his classmates otherwise ‘harass[ed],’ ‘taunted,’ and ‘mock[ed]’ Phillips — which were described as acts of ‘hate and racism’ constituting a ‘hate crime.’”
One-sided Questions
The lawsuit also details the “one-sided accusatory” questions from the Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie that “resulted in numerous headlines around the country that further flamed accusations against Nicholas.”
Guthrie, for instance, grilled Sandmann and asked whether “you owe anybody an apology” and “why didn’t you walk away.”
But Guthrie gave military faker Phillips the equivalent of a warm bubble bath. “Do you think he should have apologized?” she asked. On that note, NBC “continued to promote its false narrative that Nicholas had instigated a racist confrontation with Phillips long after Phillips was exposed as a fraud.”
Recall that Phillips never got anywhere near Southeast Asia. He was a refrigerator repairman who never left the states, although he did go AWOL a few times. He also has a criminal record.
The difference in Guthrie’s questioning of Phillips and Nicholas — days after Phillips’ lies and ever-changing story were exposed and a 16-year-old was being subjected to death threats, as Guthrie herself acknowledged — was entirely inappropriate and underscored NBCUniversal’s bias against Nicholas while perpetuating the false narrative that Phillips was blameless and deserved an apology from Nicholas.
The lawsuit offers a detailed list of the broadcasts and stories that demonstrated its “false, reckless, malicious, and agenda-driven attacks against children in violation of well-recognized journalistic standards and ethics.”
As with the lawsuits against CNN and the Post, this one accuses NBC of reckless disregard of the truth.
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