ALONG WITH MOST OF THE MEDIA, INCLUDING MOST OF THE “CONSERVATIVE” MEDIA: I Failed the Covington Catholic Test: Next time there’s a viral story, I’ll wait for more facts to emerge.
As I watched the longer videos, I began to see the smirking kid in a different light. It seemed to me that a wave of emotions rolled over his face as Phillips approached him: confusion, fear, resolve. He finally, I thought, settled on an expression designed to mimic respect while signaling to his friends that he’s got this under control. Observing it, I wondered what different reaction I could have reasonably hoped a high-school junior to have in such an unfamiliar and bewildering situation. I came up empty.
He certainly did better than a lot of allegedly mature and sensible journalists and pundits. Which is the problem with this resolution at the end of the article: “I’ll get my news from legitimate journalists instead of an online mob for whom Saturday-morning indignation is just another form of entertainment.”
But it was the “legitimate journalists” who pushed this story and the dishonest video. It was other people who got to the truth.
