Source: James Barrett
On Friday, one of the lawyers representing Nick Sandmann posted a video that shows what actually happened leading up to and during the incident from the carefully cropped viral video of the Covington Catholic High School boys’ encounter with Native American protester Nathan Phillips — and the media’s potentially libelous coverage of the incident.
“A mob rushed to judgment to wrongfully condemn, threaten & vilify Nick Sandmann based solely on an out-of-context video clip,” wrote experienced libel and defamation lawyer L. Lin Wood in a tweet Friday. “It only takes 15 minutes to learn the truth. Here it is.”
Wood and fellow attorney Todd McMurtry are heading up the legal team that recently sent letters to 54 organizations and individuals — among them reporters, media personalities, and Democratic politicians — threatening potential legal action for libelous statements about the Covington Catholic teens. McMurtry said his legal team “has been working full-time to review the media accounts of what happened,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Friday. “This week they have prepared documentation preservation letters addressed to organizations and individuals they believe may have defamed or libeled Nick with false reporting.” (See full list below.)
Since Wood first posted the “Nick Sandmann: The Truth in 15 Minutes” video, it has been circulating on social media and has begun to make waves, including over at Reddit, where a lot of the initial reaction portrayed the boys as racist harassers. Along with several Reddit users posting about their personal experiences with the racist hate group Black Israelite Hebrews, who targeted the boys with racist and homophobic slurs, others lambasted the media for egregiously one-sided reporting, noted social media’ s role in spreading the false stories, and put the fiasco in context of the media’s over-the-top response to Trump. A few examples of responses on Reddit (formatting adjusted):
- How did this become about the kid and not about the “Black Israelite/Hebrew” guys who were way worse. They shouted derogatory comments to anyone who walked past them.
- This is why I don’t jump on big news waves anymore. Everyday Trump is being impeached in r/politics according to some news organization or blog. Every day something else crazy happens but with a deeper look shows a different picture. We’re so inundated with cable news creating dramatic headlines for ad revenue that it’s hard to weed through the bullsh**. And another f***ed up part is the real story will only reach maybe a third of the original, so people still believe the original narrative. People have already moved on to the next thing to be outraged by.
- I remember when Trump was first elected someone cautioned the media and said “if we turn the dial to 11 for every single story about Trump, what do we do when something really important happens.” I find myself less willing to believe the news now then 2 years ago without taking steps to verify what I heard.
- That is exactly why the dude won. People are waking up to the media’s utter f***ing nonsense, and the media have gone out of their f***ing way to portray every single little thing Trump does as full-Hitler to the point that anyone who looks at the sh** critically can’t even figure out if the things he’s doing are actually bad or not.
- Reddit played a huge role too. I saw countless posts from subreddits making the front page like posts reading something along the lines of “this is modern day racism” and sharing the images of inside a dinner during civil rights movements. It seemed like pretty much every subreddit who posts content mainly around anti-trump stuff had some sort of highly voted post on this. (BPT, Calling for Doxing, More quick reaction, More again) I mean these are posts that are still up, with just 5 minutes of going back and searching. Like 3 of these 4 I saw either on the front page or like very close to it.
Below is the list of individuals, companies and organizations that Sandmann’s lawyers reportedly have sent letters threatening potential legal action for defamation:
- The Washington Post
- The New York Times
- Cable News Network, Inc. (CNN)
- The Guardian
- National Public Radio
- TMZ
- Atlantic Media Inc.
- Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.
- Diocese of Covington
- Diocese of Lexington
- Archdiocese of Louisville
- Diocese of Baltimore
- Ana Cabrera (CNN)
- Sara Sidner (CNN)
- Erin Burnett (CNN)
- S.E. Cupp (CNN)
- Elliot C. McLaughlin (CNN)
- Amanda Watts (CNN)
- Emanuella Grinberg (CNN)
- Michelle Boorstein (Washington Post)
- Cleve R. Wootson Jr. (Washington Post)
- Antonio Olivo (Washington Post)
- Joe Heim (Washington Post)
- Michael E. Miller (Washington Post)
- Eli Rosenberg (Washington Post)
- Isaac Stanley-Becker (Washington Post)
- Kristine Phillips (Washington Post)
- Sarah Mervosh (New York Times)
- Emily S. Rueb (New York Times)
- Maggie Haberman (New York Times)
- David Brooks (New York Times)
- Shannon Doyne
- Kurt Eichenwald
- Andrea Mitchell (NBC/MSNBC)
- Savannah Guthrie (NBC)
- Joy Reid (MSNBC)
- Chuck Todd (NBC)
- Noah Berlatsky
- Elisha Fieldstadt (NBC)
- Eun Kyung Kim
- HBO
- Bill Maher
- Warner Media
- Conde Nast
- GQ
- Heavy.com
- The Hill
- The Atlantic
- Bustle.com
- Ilhan Omar
- Elizabeth Warren
- Kathy Griffin
- Alyssa Milano
- Jim Carrey
