The price of fake news? Try $250 million

[The Green Barbarian]

MAGA hat-wearing Kentucky teen sues Washington Post for $250 million, alleging ‘McCarthyism’

Nick Sandmann, the "Make America Great Again" hat-toting 16-year-old from Kentucky seen in a series of January videos that showed him smiling among a crowd of his dancing, laughing peers as he was approached by an Indigenous drummer near the Lincoln Memorial, is suing the Washington Post.

Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School, is suing the newspaper for $250 million in damages, alleging that it engaged in a "modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies," according to legal documents posted online by lawyers Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry.

Said parties "attacked, vilified and threatened" Sandmann, according to the lawsuit.

The Post claimed that Sandmann instigated the Jan. 18 encounter when it "conveyed that Nicholas engaged in acts of racism by 'swarming'" Indigenous veteran Nathan Phillips, "'blocking' his exit away from the students and otherwise engaging in racist misconduct," the lawsuit said.

"The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the president."

The newspaper carried out a "campaign to target Nicholas in furtherance of its political agenda," the lawsuit alleged.

And it did this by "using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles which effectively provided a worldwide megaphone to Phillips and other anti-Trump individuals and entities to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president," it added.

The lawsuit further alleged that the Post "bullied an innocent child with an absolute disregard for the pain and destruction its attacks would cause to his life."

The Sandmanns are now seeking $200 million in punitive damages and $50 million in compensatory damages — the same amount, the lawsuit noted, that "Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, paid in cash for the Post when his company, Nash Holdings, purchased the newspaper in 2013."

The lawsuit was filed "by and through his parents" Ted and Julie Sandmann in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky.

For its part, The Washington Post issued a statement saying that it is "reviewing a copy of the lawsuit and we plan to mount a vigorous defense."

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

The encounter at the Lincoln Memorial unfolded on Jan. 18, on the day that the March for Life was taking place in Washington, D.C.

Video that emerged from the day initially showed Sandmann and Philips standing face to face. Sandmann smiled and his classmates appeared to laugh and chant while Phillips drummed before him.

Sandmann claimed in a January statement that he was called "every name in the book" after the video was released, that people described him as a "racist" and added that he would "not stand for this mob-like character assassination of my family's name."

However, subsequent video gave the scene a wider context, showing the encounter unfolding after a group that appeared to be linked to the Hebrew Israelites shouted profane insults at students gathered before the Lincoln Memorial.

This same group appeared to hurl insults at a group of Indigenous people.

Sandmann said that the students were being called "racists," "white crackers" and "incest kids," and that they were given permission by a chaperone to counter those alleged taunts with school chants.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ma ... spartanntp

[averagejoe]

More people should be taking the lying media to task!

[The Green Barbarian]

Empire actor Jussie Smollett's weeks-long reign as (liberal) America's intersectional sweetheart came to an inglorious end this weekend when it was revealed in multiple reports that he paid his two Nigerian pals to stage a fake hate crime against him last month in Chicago.

Many (perhaps most) Americans from the beginning suspected that Smollett tried to manufacture a hate crime to make Trump supporters look bad. But not the mainstream media. They fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

You would think that after falling for "tribal elder" Nathan Phillips' dubious claims last month -- to the point of being legally culpable -- the media would be a bit more circumspect.

But no. When presented with another enticing opportunity to demonize Trump supporters, they jumped like Pavlov's dogs at the chance.

TMZ broke the original version of the story late last month in a report alleging that Smollett was the victim of a vicious hate crime:
Upon leaving a Chicago Subway sandwich shop circa 2 AM one sub-zero night in late January, two masked men recognized him as the openly gay black actor starring in Fox’s ‘Empire,’ hurled racist and homophobic slurs at him, beat him to the point of breaking his ribs, doused him with bleach, tied a noose around his neck, before pronouncing “This is MAGA Country!” and fleeing.
Detectives now have a receipt for the rope found on Smollett's neck showing that his Nigerian friends bought it.

There were inconsistencies in Smollett's story from the beginning, not to mention a continuous flow of leaks from Chicago cops indicating that they were investigating a potential hoax.

Why didn't Smollett mention that the attackers yelled, "This is MAGA country!" during his first interview? How did he know the race of his attackers if they were completely covered and wearing face masks? Why was he still holding his Subway sandwich when he got back to the apartment? Why did he wait more than 40 minutes before calling the police? Why did he still have the noose around his neck when the police came? Why did he ask them to turn off their body cameras? Where did TMZ get the idea that he had broken ribs? (He didn't.) Is it really plausible that these racist, anti-gay Trumpies would be out hunting for Smollett at 2 a.m. on one of the coldest nights of the year?

https://pjmedia.com/video/how-the-media ... lett-hoax/

[averagejoe]

Fake news....finally Washington Post admits to the fake news.

$250,000,000 lawsuit later and taking almost 40 days to admitting it was fake.




WaPo Admits Inaccuracies in Its Reporting About Covington High School Students

Covington student Nick Sandmann filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper

The Washington Post issued an editor's note Thursday admitting inaccuracies in its initial reporting on a January incident involving Native American protesters, high school students from Covington, Ky., and a group known as Black Hebrew Israelites.

The note sweeps away the provocative details that turned the story into a phenomenon, including the accusation that Covington students prevented Native American activist Nathan Phillips from moving away.

"A Washington Post article first posted online on Jan. 19 reported on a Jan. 18 incident at the Lincoln Memorial," the statement begins. "Subsequent reporting, a student’s statement and additional video allow for a more complete assessment of what occurred, either contradicting or failing to confirm accounts provided in that story — including that Native American activist Nathan Phillips was prevented by one student from moving on, that his group had been taunted by the students in the lead-up to the encounter, and that the students were trying to instigate a conflict."

The editor's note acknowledges that the high school student facing Phillips contradicted the latter's account of the incident, and that "an investigation conducted for the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School found the students’ accounts consistent with videos." The statement adds that the Post reported on these subsequent developments.

The student at the center of this imbroglio, high school junior Nick Sandmann, filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the Post, and his attorneys claim the newspaper led a "mob of bullies which attacked, vilified & threatened" him.

In January, film emerged of Sandmann and a group of Covington Catholic high school students, many of whom were wearing "Make America Great Again" hats, appearing to taunt Phillips, a Native American and veteran, near the Lincoln Memorial. Initial reactions on social media condemned the mostly white students for seeming to mock Phillips.

Phillips initially claimed he saw the students taunting indigenous peoples near the memorial and tried to walk towards the monument before being blocked, but later said he stepped into the crowd to defuse tensions between the students and a nearby group of extremists known as Black Hebrew Israelites. Video showed Phillips banging his drum inches from Sandmann's face, and Phillips claimed to feel threatened and blocked by the student.