Sandmann Settlement

Journalism demands a reporter to give facts, not paint a narrative to fit their own political world view. If Nick Sandmann does nothing else with his life, he will have accomplished teaching a lesson to some of the least ethical members of the fourth estate ever to don a press badge.

You remember Sandmann. He’s the 16-year-old who was slandered by a host of media outlets in March of last year while his Kentucky Catholic High School attended a pro-life rally in our nation’s capital. This week CNN settled a lawsuit brought by his family for falsely attacking him.

CNN and many other media giants painted Sandmann and his classmates as menacing and racist for standing and smiling as an elderly Native American man drummed and chanted in front of them. It was only later that it became obvious the media had edited the video of the event to sell the idea that the students had pushed the encounter. Actually, it was the other way around.

Sandmann’s greatest sin was wearing a “Make America Great Again” red hat. That made the poor reporting totally acceptable to the folks who run CNN. Attorneys for him filed suit against CNN, NBC and the Washington Post asking for $800-million dollars in damages. CNN decided to settle fast, throwing their colleagues under the bus. The amount of the settlement wasn’t disclosed.

Facts are damnable things. Just ask members of the Duke Lacrosse team who were wrongly accused of rape back in 2006. Duke ended up paying for millions of dollars in damages because the story just wasn’t true.

Neither was CNN’s coverage of the Covington Catholic High School students and Nick Sandmann.