Manufactured stunts presented as real news

One more in the continuing stream of manipulated news. Its not that it is unusual but that people are beginning to notice. And it is interesting that distributed citizen reporting is beginning to push back and correct ideological or narrative pushing misreporting. I mentioned something similar in A miraculous world that is nearly miraculous.

From The Catholic Bonfire At The Stake by Rod Dreher.

Good morning from Dublin. It is really interesting to observe US public controversies from outside the American bubble. I am startled by the massive controversy that has erupted over the Covington (KY) Catholic school boys and the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, in the aftermath of the March For Life. Several video clips of the confrontation between an elder of the Omaha tribe and a large group of Catholic high school boys wearing MAGA hats have gone viral. Here’s a news story about the video, summing up the basics of the controversy.

A selected part of the clip shows boys jumping and hooting and acting in a somewhat intimidating way towards the older man, as if to mock him. Some people interpret the boy standing in front of the man, the kid with a rictus grin, as sneering at the old man. Others say that you can’t assume that was a sneer; maybe the kid just didn’t know what to do.

In any case, the Catholic school has apologized for its students’ action, and the mayor of their hometown has denounced them. The boys were in town for the March For Life. The video is being widely cited as an example of the Trumpification of Christianity, and connected to the Karen Pence school controversy as yet another example of why conservative Christianity is an evil that must be driven from the precincts of the decent.

It is possible that the Catholic boys were complete asses. My initial judgment was that they certainly were that. You don’t treat a peaceful elderly person like this. Even if they thought he was wrong, those boys owed him respect. Yes, the old man approached them, but they could and should have handled him with respect. They come off as bullies.

But then I watched more clips, showing the greater context of the incident. It is not as simple as it has been portrayed. Below is a more complete video account of what happened. In it, one of the Catholic boys is overheard asking, “Does anybody know what he’s doing? Does anybody know what’s going on here.”

And, in it, one of the Indians with Phillips shouts: “White people, go back to Europe. This is not your land.” He curses the students with f-bombs (video is NSFW). He goes on: “You’re being a white man about it. That’s all you know how to do.”

You didn’t see that in the news reporting, did you?

He goes on and presents evidence that two different groups of provocateurs targeted a group of white Catholic students in order to bait them and manufacture a confrontation which they could then use for their propagandistic purposes.

It is still not clear the entire sequence of events, but Dreher makes a reasonably compelling case that this was all a stunt for the mainstream media, pulled by noxious activists, and based on racism and bigotry on the part of the activists. Might not be the full truth but at this present read, that seems correct.

The larger two issues are 1) why is the press failing to investigate the news which apparently would have cast doubt on the veracity of the claim and 2) why is it that we now have to get accurate information from non-mainstream sources in order to understand what is happening.

UPDATE: Scott Adams apologizes for believing CNN.

UPDATE: A further account with additional details. The Media Wildly Mischaracterized That Video of Covington Catholic Students Confronting a Native American Veteran by Robby Soave includes a statement from one of the students at the center of the confrontation.