The Washington Post has surrendered to the Catholic boy it smeared when a “Native American elder” accosted him at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. at 2019’s March for Life.
The newspaper settled a $250 million defamation lawsuit for an undisclosed amount with Nicholas Sandmann, the victim of the Post’s erroneous reporting. Sandmann announced the settlement Friday on Twitter.
The Post follows CNN in settling with the high-school boy from Covington Catholic High in Kentucky.
The leftist news media smeared Sandmann coast-to-coast after the “elder,” Nathan Phillips confronted the boy and his school chums, then falsely presented himself not only as a victim of “racism” but also as a war hero.
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Smear Job
The trouble for the Post began when its reporters followed the rest of the leftist media in retailing a false narrative about the “confrontation” between Phillips and Sandmann. Video of the nose-to-nose encounter went viral, and the nationwide smear of Sandmann began.
The Post attacked Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, because of its well-known bias against President Trump, the boy’s lawsuit alleged: “The Post wrongfully targeted and bullied Nicholas because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap.”
The Post defamed Sandmann with “reckless disregard for the truth” by not fully investigating the events of January 18, 2019, the lawsuit said. The nut of the Post’s reporting was that Sandmann confronted and ridiculed the fake war hero. The reporting also suggested that Sandmann and his schoolmates were racists, a narrative the leftist media, celebrities, and politicians also tried to sell.
And why would the Post and the media do that? “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President,” the lawsuit alleged.
Though the Post published a free-standing editor’s note that attempted to correct the errors, Sandmann pursued the case. A federal judge in Kentucky dismissed 30 of the 33 claims in the lawsuit because they were opinions and not defamatory, but then reinstated three claims involving outright falsehoods to move forward.
As with the settlement with CNN, the terms of this settlement are undisclosed, but Sandmann declared victory.
“We have settled with WAPO and CNN,” Sandmann tweeted. “The fight isn’t over. 2 down. 6 to go.”
In March, Sandmann sued ABC, CBS, Rolling Stone, the New York Times and Gannett, which publishes USA Today and other second-rate newspapers.
“News organizations sometimes settle defamation claims rather than face a trial,” the Post said of the settlement. “Even with a favorable judgment at trial, the costs of defending against such a suit can be substantial.”
Black Hebrews And A Fake War Hero
Worst thing is, the leftists who run the news media would not have landed in hot water legally had they bothered finding out the truth before they smeared Sandmann and his classmates.
The so-called “confrontation” began because the Black Hebrew Israelites were shouting racial and other imprecations at the Covington boys. As the boys replied with school cheers, Phillips walked up to Sandmann, stood face-to-face, and began pounding an Indian drum while chanting.
Sandmann didn’t move.
When video of the “confrontation” went viral, the media jumped on Sandmann, his lawsuit alleged, because he is white and wore a MAGA hat. Even worse, he marched to defend the unborn.
That made him a target for deranged leftists, who readily repeated Phillips’ claims of derring do in the jungles of Vietnam that a retired Navy SEAL quickly exposed as false.
The narrative was perfect. A Native American war hero, who fought for his country despite the racism and discrimination he and his people suffered after the evil white man stole their land, is rightly protesting at the Indigenous People’s March. But the white man was there to put him down again. This time, his oppressor is a rich, racist, private-school white kid with a “punchable face.”
It was all untrue, but too good for the leftist media to pass up.
Now, they’re paying up.
Photo: Screen-grab from YouTube video
C. Mitchell Shaw is a freelance writer and public speaker who addresses a range of topics related to liberty and the U.S. Constitution. A strong privacy advocate, he was a privacy nerd before it was cool.
