The Covington Aftermath

There's an article in The Atlantic summing up what happened with the video about the boys from Covington Catholic High School and the elderly Native American man.  Written by one of the editors of that magazine, the article is one that you would expect to provide a left wing perspective on what happened.  Strangely, though, the author does a pretty good job of chronicling the actual events.  A video that shows nothing of the sort is proclaimed by the media and others to show racial hatred and abuse of the elderly man.  The elderly man is lionized as a peaceful Vietnam vet who has been harassed by MAGA hatted teens, except it turns out that the guy is not a Vietnam vet as he claimed and the teens didn't harass him.  Other video shows this clearly.  The point of the article, though, is this:  by rushing to report a story that actually had not happened and then piling on in criticism of boys who had done nothing wrong aside from wearing hats that the reporters didn't like, the mainstream media has reinforced the perception that this was more fake news from a media that regularly pushes fake news.

I have to agree with this article, although I would say that media reporting of fake news is not a "perception" but rather a "truth".  You can be certain that none of this story would have been reported had the boys not been wearing MAGA hats.  And once they story took off, no accusation was too vile for the media to make even though there was no proof of anything happening.