MAGA brats mock Native American with "build the wall" chants

[Ziggurat]

Fairly sure the title was changed during an update on the story. This appears to be the original article, and it is still able to be found on CNN.

You may be right that it's the current form of the original article. The lawsuit says the first article contains the quote, “a smiling young man in a red Make America Great Again hat standing directly in front of [Phillips]” and your link says, "a smiling young man in a red Make America Great Again hat standing directly in front of the man". So that's a match. But...

It also lists the correction of Philips to denote the fact he didn't serve in Vietnam, so I'm pretty sure it's the original one. I can look for the other one, but the article dates change with any update.

If this is basically the original article, that correction is not the only change they made. The fifth paragraph reads,

CNN's Jake Tapper obtained a statement on Sunday from Nick Sandmann, a junior at Covington Catholic High School, who said he is the student in the video. Sandmann said he was trying to defuse a tense situation and denied insinuations that anyone in the crowd was acting out of racism or hatred.​

But Sunday would be January 20, and the original article appeared on January 19, so that could only have been added later. There are a number of other textual mismatches between the lawsuit and your link. For example, the lawsuit says the original article made the following defamatory claim:

Phillips also appeared upset in a video Taitano posted after the confrontation. He wiped away tears as he talked about the chants of ‘build that wall.’​

Your link says:

Phillips also appeared upset in a video Taitano posted after the confrontation. He wiped away tears as he talked about the students' actions.​

Quite similar, but the change is still significant . So either this is a new story which recycled heavily from the original story, or they made a lot more changes than just the Philips/Vietnam thing.

 

[plague311]

You may be right that it's the current form of the original article. The lawsuit says...

*snipped, brevity*

Quite similar, but the change is still significant . So either this is a new story which recycled heavily from the original story, or they made a lot more changes than just the Philips/Vietnam thing.

It could be that was the result of the settlement of the lawsuit as well. Just because Sandmann won doesn't mean he won money. Maybe the retractions/changes are what he came away with.

I have nothing to support that.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The second wave of criticism of the Covington students

Reason's Robby Soave has a retrospective article. "One year after the Covington debacle, it's actually the gratuitous cruelty of the Laura Wagners and Ruth Grahams that sticks out to me as worthy of ongoing criticism—far more than the significantly flawed but at least summarily retracted news articles by the likes of The Washington Post and CNN."

 

[Ziggurat]

According to the article he still has a few more outstanding lawsuits. Should walk away with a healthy sum it would appear.

The Washington Post has now settled. I expect NBC will probably follow.

 

[Meadmaker]

The Washington Post has now settled. I expect NBC will probably follow.

Ahhh, America. Where you can suffer a grievous wrong, by which I mean people say nasty things about you in the newspaper, and you can walk away rich. Don't get used to it, kid. You just got lucky.


And....I'm not complaining as such. I do think that what happened to Nick Sandmann was wrong, and I do think someone should be held accountable for publishing all the false information. It's just odd that the solution is to throw buckets of money at a pretty ordinary sixteen year old, and his lawyers. That's the system we have, but it's weird.

 

[Belz...]

Ahhh, America. Where you can suffer a grievous wrong, by which I mean people say nasty things about you in the newspaper, and you can walk away rich.

Didn't they get death threats?

 

[Joe Random]

The OP really hasn't aged well, has it?

 

[Ziggurat]

The OP really hasn't aged well, has it?

Lots of posts in this thread haven't. The OP is among them, but it isn't alone.

 

[Joe Random]

Lots of posts in this thread haven't. The OP is among them, but it isn't alone.

The first 5-6 pages were an interesting re-read. But it does serve as a great example to never trust initial reports regardless of source, and for the love of Bob don't entrench yourself into an inflexible position you can't change while the ink is still drying on the article. Chalk it up to anything from 'fake news' to simple 'fog of war'. Initial reports are going to be hazy at best, flat out wrong at worst.

Sort of like getting a phone call from my mother talking about the latest family incident. Listen and nod along with all the high drama, then wait a bit and see what really happened before reacting.

 

[Belz...]

These were particularily unsavory:

That kid with the smirk is so ******. By this time tomorrow we'll know his name, where he lives, we already know he goes to a Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Kentucky. He's in for a massive public shaming. He's going to be toxic to colleges. Social media is going to take its revenge.

All the kids had to do to avoid what's coming is not wear the MAGA hats. This story would be a nothing burger if they hadn't been wearing those hats. They chose to put on racist apparel and now they're going to get what they deserve.

 

[Meadmaker]

Lots of posts in this thread haven't. The OP is among them, but it isn't alone.

(Goes off to check what I wrote in the early part of the thread.....)

 

[theprestige]

The OP really hasn't aged well, has it?

Hell, Meadmaker's post from today hasn't aged well, and it's only been up for a few hours.

 

[Meadmaker]

Hell, Meadmaker's post from today hasn't aged well, and it's only been up for a few hours.

Did he not get buckets of money? I haven't seen any actual news stories on it. I assumed that since the word "settled" was in there, that money was involved.

 

[Belz...]

Did he not get buckets of money? I haven't seen any actual news stories on it. I assumed that since the word "settled" was in there, that money was involved.

Did you miss my response to your post?

 

[Meadmaker]

Did you miss my response to your post?

Yes.

Not sure I understand, though. I was asking about buckets of money, related to whether my post "aged well".

I don't know. Was there objection my characterization of what happened to Nick as too flippant?


Well, regardless, I assumed that "settling" with the Washington Post involved a significant amount of money changing hands. More money than Mr. Sandmann could have achieved through any form of gainful employment in the foreseeable future. I don't know that that's true. I haven't seen news reports about the settlement. It just seems that's the way things work out in America.

And, as noted, that's not a horrible thing in this case. WaPo et al really did do some bad things here, and I don't know any other way to hold them accountable. It's just ironic that, as bad as the incident was, the compensation was such that, if it is what I would expect when settling with mega-corporation media outlets, being the target of such awful attacks turned out to be a very luck day for the kid.

 

[Belz...]

Yes.

Not sure I understand, though. I was asking about buckets of money, related to whether my post "aged well".

I don't know. Was there objection my characterization of what happened to Nick as too flippant?

The participants were threatened because of a false narrative. That's why they got money. Your characterisation was wrong.

 

[theprestige]

Did he not get buckets of money? I haven't seen any actual news stories on it. I assumed that since the word "settled" was in there, that money was involved.

It's obvious you're unhappy with this outcome. You either think the Covington kids deserved their treatment in the media, or at least didn't deserve restitution for that treatment.

I think that opinion was dead and rotten to begin with, so naturally it's not going to age well even over a few minutes.

Anyway, what's your problem with the outcome? Is it these people specifically you wish hadn't gotten a settlement? Is it the principle of settling a lawsuit you find distasteful? Do you object to the entire idea of criminalizing defamation and libel?

 

[Brainster]

If you think he shouldn't have gotten a financial windfall, just imagine what would have happened if the longer video had not shown up. In fact, you don't have to imagine, because people in this very thread were fantasizing about what would happen:

That kid with the smirk is so ******. By this time tomorrow we'll know his name, where he lives, we already know he goes to a Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Kentucky. He's in for a massive public shaming. He's going to be toxic to colleges. Social media is going to take its revenge.

Cancel culture at its finest.

 

[Meadmaker]

It's obvious you're unhappy with this outcome. You either think the Covington kids deserved their treatment in the media, or at least didn't deserve restitution for that treatment.

I think that opinion was dead and rotten to begin with, so naturally it's not going to age well even over a few minutes.

Anyway, what's your problem with the outcome? Is it these people specifically you wish hadn't gotten a settlement? Is it the principle of settling a lawsuit you find distasteful? Do you object to the entire idea of criminalizing defamation and libel?

So...my post:

Ahhh, America. Where you can suffer a grievous wrong, by which I mean people say nasty things about you in the newspaper, and you can walk away rich. Don't get used to it, kid. You just got lucky.


And....I'm not complaining as such. I do think that what happened to Nick Sandmann was wrong, and I do think someone should be held accountable for publishing all the false information. It's just odd that the solution is to throw buckets of money at a pretty ordinary sixteen year old, and his lawyers. That's the system we have, but it's weird.

Just read. Don't add. Just read.

And come on, you offered two alternatives:

You either think the Covington kids deserved their treatment in the media, or at least didn't deserve restitution for that treatment.

Surely you could have taken that to the next level and figured out which was the one I really think couldn't you It's obvious.

You can tell that I obviously think the kids deserved their treatment because when I said people said nasty things about him and the paper should be held accountable that....oh....uhmm....I guess I didn't mean that.

Well then it's obvious that I meant they didn't deserve restitution, because i said what happened was wrong, and that I wasn't complaining that he settled, and that's the system for holding people accountable, so....uhmmm...I guess I didn't say that, either.

So, maybe, what really happened is that you inferred something that wasn't written. That's one possibility to consider.


So here's the real scoop:

I don't know how much Nick Sandmann got, but because of the nature of the deep pocketed corporations, I'm guessing it was a whole bunch. I know his lawyers were asking for one gazillion dollars, but they probably settled for....how much? A few hundred thousand? Any less than that and they might as well not have settled at all. It would come out of the petty cash drawer. Maybe a million or more? That's a lot of money.

It's a weird system we have in America. "Punitive damages" can turn someone from any ordinary person to a rich person even though what happened wasn't all that bad. That's weird. It's the system, but it's weird. If indeed he got one million dollars or more as a result of this incident, it was in fact the luckiest day of his life.


Now......don't add anything to that. Stick with what people say, not what you are sure they must be thinking.

 

[Ziggurat]

It's obvious you're unhappy with this outcome. You either think the Covington kids deserved their treatment in the media, or at least didn't deserve restitution for that treatment.

I don't think that's quite a fair representation of his position, at least not as I read it. He quite clearly didn't think those kids deserved their treatment in the media, and rather explicitly indicated that the media should pay a price for it. I think his point was more about the legal system in general, and not really specific to this case: that huge financial rewards for victims don't always make sense on their own even in cases where the perpetrators deserve huge financial penalties as punishment. The best argument against this system (which he didn't explicitly state but I suspect he would agree with) is probably that it creates bad incentives for people to falsify or exaggerate claims of harm for financial gain.

I'm not unsympathetic to that viewpoint, except that I can't see any better way to allocate the penalties except to the victims. If the victims end up better off than they would have if nothing had happened, well, that may not be the perfect outcome, but it's an acceptable one. And I don't know of a solution to the problem of falsified claims of harm which eliminates the possibility of huge or even disproportionate payouts without compromising the rights of victims.