New York Times Updates Story About Encounter Between Catholic High School Students and Native American
The New York Times corrected a story through an update about an encounter between MAGA hat wearing high school students and a Native American.
The initial story claimed the students were intimidating the Native American but a closer look of a video of the incident paints an entirely different picture.
The Native American approached the students and one student in question held his ground while the Native American was beating a drum in close proximity to the student’s face.
Now The New York Times is backtracking in an update to its initial story.
A fuller and more complicated picture emerged on Sunday of the videotaped encounter between a Native American man and a throng of high school boys wearing “Make America Great Again” gear outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Interviews and additional video footage suggest that an explosive convergence of race, religion and ideological beliefs — against a national backdrop of political tension — set the stage for the viral moment. Early video excerpts from the encounter obscured the larger context, inflaming outrage.
The first New York Times story claimed the students surrounded a Native American.
They intersected on Friday in an unsettling encounter outside the Lincoln Memorial — a throng of cheering and jeering high school boys, predominantly white and wearing “Make America Great Again” gear, surrounding a Native American elder.
It also used the incident to blame President Trump.
The encounter became the latest touchpoint for racial tensions in America, particularly under Mr. Trump, who has painted immigrants in broad strokes as rapists and drug dealers and recently mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren with a reference to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, sacred ground for Native Americans whose ancestors fought and died there.
The first series of stories ignited a huge social media backlash against the student and his Kentucky high school – Covington Catholic High School.
Fox News reports:
The video clips prompted a fierce social-media backlash, including campaigns aimed at identifying and harassing the high school students. Actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that the footage “brought me to tears,” while actor Chris Evans tweeted that the students’ actions were “appalling” and “shameful.”
Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) defended the students on Twitter:
(2/5) The honorable and tolerant students of Covington Catholic School came to DC to advocate for the unborn and to learn about our nation’s Capitol. What they got was a brutal lesson in the unjust court of public opinion and social media mobs.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) January 20, 2019
The student issued a statement regarding the incident.
From CNN:
I am providing this factual account of what happened on Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to correct misinformation and outright lies being spread about my family and me.
I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 4:30 p.m. I was told to be there by 5:30 p.m., when our busses were due to leave Washington for the trip back to Kentucky. We had been attending the March for Life rally, and then had split up into small groups to do sightseeing.
Read the entire statement here.
The entire video shows the high school student remained calm while the Native American was the aggressor.
In its pursuit to undermine President Trump, the agenda-driven media will jump the gun and write stories to put the president and his supporters in the worst possible light.
