Covington High School Issue

[*michaelsean*]

(01-28-2019, 06:40 PM)Dill Wrote: Perhaps Wilson assumed everyone was familiar with the "horrendous reporting." His focus was on the response, the quickly coordinating right-wing media reaction, which he tracks. 

For me what makes both articles interesting is that they step back and examine what happens in the back and forth between different media camps.

Both agree that there was indeed something loathsome about the behavior of the boys, whether the Hebrew Israelites are in the picture or not.  People who are not Trump supporters understandably condemn the behavior in the first version of events, but fringe elements (including celebrities) run right into doxxing and other equally condemnable behavior. 

Then a right wing counter-campaign turns the rowdies into choir boys who have been framed by the bad leftist media eager to "hate"--some of whom too quickly apologize when they see the extreme threats to the boys, AGAIN without trying to understand something of the larger media-political context in which they are operating.  Elements of the "liberal" media react without thinking--twice.

I notice others, mostly "liberals," are taking this more critical/analytic high road as well.

How the Media Turned the MAGA Teens Into Martyrs
https://www.theringer.com/2019/1/24/18196049/covington-catholic-lincoln-memorial-nathan-phillips

The Covington controversy might have come and gone as a parable about “fake news,” “media bias,” “outrage culture,” “tribalism,” “online bullying,” and all the other buzzwords that resonate in the MAGA moment. But now it lingers as a conservative cause célèbre. (Mercifully, the Covington controversy has cured the right’s week-long outrage about a Gillette commercial.) The White House is providing daily statements. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump tweeted: “Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good—maybe even to bring people together.” They have indeed united the right. Sandmann, in particular, has stood his ground in the press as defiantly as he seemed to stand in Phillips’s face. Sandmann and his family have mounted a public relations campaign to absolve the teen and to further endear him to conservatives who have quickly come to regard him as a folk hero in the general struggle against liberal media biases. Sandmann’s martyrdom is an ironic if predictable twist: Right-wing media spent a year clowning and doubting school shooting survivors only to canonize some intrepid teenagers who survived wearing MAGA hats while visiting Trump’s Washington. “The media” has eagerly—foolishly—enhanced Sandmann’s right-wing regard. The two parties in this argument have kept one crucial perception in common. They look at Nicholas Sandmann, and they see Brett Kavanaugh. They look at Covington Catholic, and they see Georgetown Prep. They look at the MAGA hats, and they see red.

Several tangential arguments have since emerged: The students were wearing MAGA hats, which are, inherently, offensive. If Sandmann and the other MAGA teens hadn’t been wearing those red alarms, the Covington media fiasco never would have happened. The MAGA teens may have been misunderstood, but they’re also unconditionally protected by their visible allegiance to Trump and his tribe. The teens behaved poorly; the Black Hebrew Israelites even worse. But “the media” behaved worst of all, having compounded so many ambiguities and then having the nerve to call these revisions a clarification.

Finally, then, what makes all three articles interesting for me, beyond pushback against the "boys-were-doing-nothing-wrong" revision, is their calling attention to how quick-draw news reporting feeds the Trump-directed "fake news" narrative, which in turn has been so effective in undermining institutions required for functioning democracy, feeding as it does on chaos and division.

It’s not critical or analytical. They chose a side and wrote accordingly. Did either of them give any accountability to Phillips? You can’t possibly think these are critical and analytic. Defending Sandmann is hyper political right wing manipulation. Defending Phillips is critical and analytic.