Covington Catholic Highlights the Problems with the Media Over the weekend, there was an incident that went viral after the March for Life in DC.  A group of high school students from Covington Catholic showed their racist colors while wearing their MAGA hats when they gathered to wait for their bus back to Kentucky.  Only problem with the narrative was that there was video that was quickly released which told a different story. Here is an early article (note that Voat does not like the domain so I had to break the link): https:// www.inquisitr.com/5257800/covington-catholic-high-students-who-taunted-native-american-man-at-march-for-life-rally-could-be-expelled/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+google%2FyDYq+%28The+Inquisitr+-+News%29 Sounds terrible, right?  A bunch of racist, MAGA hat wearing punks doing what we all know these racists do all the time. Here's another article from yesterday using the Gillette narrative that "Boys will be boys." https://www.thedailybeast.com/boys-will-be-boys-covingtons-showed-yet-again-why-only-white-boys-can-smirk-through-that Of course, Congress got in on the action: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/native-american-congresswoman-rips-maga-hat-wearing-teens-for-incident-with-native-american-protester-caught-on-viral-video https://www.theblaze.com/news/dem-lawmaker-wants-to-ban-all-teenagers-from-wearing-maga-hats Even Forbes could not resist yesterday: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbaldoni/2019/01/20/how-coventry-catholic-diocese-can-apologize-to-nathan-phillips/amp/ However, you may notice the note at the top of the Forbes article about more information - oh, how quickly the narrative starts to fall apart.  Now, the articles are starting to be pulled: https://www.thewrap.com/national-review-pulls-article-saying-covington-students-might-as-well-have-just-spit-on-the-cross/ But that has not ended the calls for violence against these kids: https://spectator.us/liberal-punch-child/ Even if these kids had done the worst of what the media had originally accused them of, it is ridiculous for grown men and women to be calling for violence and making death threats against them and their families: https://nytimespost.com/teen-accused-of-mocking-native-americans-says-hes-getting-death-threats/ This short video sums it all up pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkOrC-HAOY4 This is just one case study of why we call the mainstream media fake news.  We support a free and independent press, but when the media cares more about pushing narratives and propaganda than simply reporting the facts, they are no longer reporting real news.  So, you ask, what should the media have done differently with this story?  Let's go back to the beginning and analyze where it broke down.  A known instigator, Nathan Philips, is recorded by a fellow Native American giving a sob story about being mocked by those evil MAGA hat wearing punks.  Ok, first rule of journalism, get all sides of the story.  Second, check the credibility of your sources.  Instead, the media just blasted it out there because it fit a narrative that they wanted to push - and by doing so, they gave the false story an appearance of credibility.  Besides, everyone knows that anyone wearing a MAGA hat is a NAZI who deserves to be punched (or worse) so even if this particular story is not entirely true, that should not stop us from publishing it since we are sure that there are other evil, MAGA hat wearing punks out there who have done much worse. To quote AOC: “There's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,”