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Comparing the Media’s Treatment of Parkland Teens and Covington Teens
The media didn’t exactly cover itself in glory this weekend. First, the media jumped on a BuzzFeed story that proved the Trump suborned perjury. It was debunked a day later by the Mueller team. As they wondered why Americans distrust them so, the media jumped on an anonymously posted video that proved teens at Covington Catholic High School were racists. That too was debunked a day later by a longer video of the incident.
The DC press corps screams when the President calls them “the enemy of the people.” Yet, time and time again, they prove his point. The facts no longer matter, only the narrative. Even if it means attacking teenagers.
Less than a year after the press rebuked anyone who dared question the teen political activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, they viciously attacked students from Covington Catholic High School. The report was based on lies that could have easily been revealed with the slightest journalistic follow-up. But the narrative fit and that’s all that matters.
Although many journalists deleted their worst tweets, I wanted to compare the news media’s treatment of one group of teenagers to the other.
Washington Post:
Perspective: The sliming of Parkland students shows the spreading stain of media polarization https://t.co/E1TleqZ0UQ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 27, 2018
In an interview with The Post, Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips says he “felt like the spirit was talking through me” as teens jeered and mocked him https://t.co/sabTvhs1zl
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 19, 2019
CNN:
A brief history of how Parkland survivor David Hogg keeps schooling lawmakers on social media https://t.co/XrgoxjISdo pic.twitter.com/WShbJADDIy
— CNN (@CNN) March 29, 2018
Video shows a crowd of teenagers wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ hats taunting a Native American elder after Friday’s Indigenous Peoples March at the Lincoln Memorial https://t.co/2bYADuaUV2 pic.twitter.com/NDtiifPjoo
— CNN (@CNN) January 20, 2019
LA Times:
Parkland students captivated the nation. But will their message resonate on election day? https://t.co/MOdo6FiVWY pic.twitter.com/crlrYsPAEg
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 4, 2018
A diocese in Kentucky is looking into videos that show youths, possibly from the diocese’s all-male high school, mocking Native Americans at a rally in Washington. https://t.co/gYmn2nLWOX
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 20, 2019
Jeet Heer, The New Republic:
The smearing of the Parkland kids seem too systematic & widespread to be totally spontaneous. There's almost certainly an oppo research firm in the mix.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 27, 2018
These are "pro-life" Catholic high school students mocking and harassing a Native American chanter. As with Ben Shapiro, a concern for "life" is the main force driving their politics. https://t.co/mfHdTrHUWv
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) January 19, 2019
Philip Bump, Washington Post:
In the past, sustained attention on the gun debate has required legislation. Post-Parkland, students are taking it on themselves. https://t.co/8tXEwpsy44
— Philip Bump (@pbump) March 14, 2018
Those kids that harassed the Native American man on the Mall were representing views more in line with their great-grandfathers than their white male peers. https://t.co/vV9GBscmGi
— Philip Bump (@pbump) January 20, 2019
Kyle Griffin, MSNBC:
The students of March for Our Lives, including survivors of the Parkland shooting, will announce a 60-day, 20-state, 75-stop summer bus tour to register young people to vote and to promote gun law reform. https://t.co/TiVNbBNYxe
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 4, 2018
WaPo spoke with Nathan Phillips, the veteran in the indigenous rights movement.
He said that while he was being harassed he kept drumming and singing, thinking about his wife who died from bone marrow cancer and the threats facing indigenous communities. https://t.co/vam0fWzhr5
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 19, 2019
Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post:
The Parkland Kids are the America I thought was lost on Election Night 2016. #amjoy https://t.co/6uRH49k2dj
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) November 4, 2018
😳👇🏾👏🏾 https://t.co/6k4DwjVrFQ
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) January 19, 2019
Anyone who spent time on Twitter this weekend knows these examples are just the mildest examples. Activists and Hollywood celebrities demanded doxxing, acts of violence, and even death for the Covington teens. These same people heralded the Parkland teens as heroes; well, at least the Parkland teens who pushed for gun control.
If the press wants to get America to trust them, perhaps they should begin reporting honestly.
Published in Journalism
Wow, this is good. That’s all I’ve got.
Covington kids should organize the same type of school walkouts that happened last year. One, it’s always easy to get teenagers to skip school, and the difference in news coverage might be truly illuminating.
I’m not sure I’d say it’s an entirely fair comparison. The Parkland kids survived a genuine horror, even if Hogg has been an irritating self-aggrandizing twerp ever since – one with a great PR machine and suddenly scads of money behind him willing to capitalize on the dead. The Covington kids? They were accosted by a grumpy old man with a drum who was trying to create an outrage narrative and thought he found his patsy. Perhaps the only similarities in the coverage stem from the media’s willingness to find every mote in the eyes of the right, and to think that surviving a horror makes one immune to any criticism afterwards – this being demonstrated in the way the media has savaged anyone critical of Hogg, while reflexively savaging the Covington kids themselves.
A more level comparison of the Covington kids has yet to be found, but would really require someone on the right attempting to manufacture their own incident on as scant and doctored of evidence.
That being said, from Kavanaugh, to Hirono and Harris applying religious tests to public office, to the savaging of high schools, there is certainly an emerging pattern of out and out bigotry towards white Catholic males. And one need not stretch back too far in time to the manufactured campus rape charges of “Mattress Girl” and others, nor was the Duke Lacrosse team charade all that long ago either.
Like I said, I’m not sure one can glean much by comparing Covington with Parkland, but one can glean a helluva lot from these others.
So, because of the MAGA hats, and the Catholic School, none of the teens connected with the Covington story were interviewed. Only the people who fit the media narrative of racist.
Oh. I see how it works now.
The Vietnam vet was a refer repairman for four years, was AWOL several times, served in the US, was confined and discharged as an E1. Either he was a loser who was never promoted or he was busted in rank. The guy who investigates stolen valor has a video showing the DD214.
Oh, the pattern is not just white Catholic males:
AND, the “outrage narrative” is most certainly not a small thing. These boys were facing reputational destruction, intended to foreclose college and career success. They still face significant risk, both physical (threats have not ended) and reputational (their image on the internet is terribly marred). Why hire someone with such bad virtual paper? Will leftist gatekeepers in college admission office shove them just a bit to the back of the pile?
Quite true. The Parkland kids (the politically useful ones anyway) have it made. The Covington kids? Far different story.
The Covington students and their parents need to go full Joan Rivers.
These Black Hebrew Israelites sound just like the Nation of Israel guys who used to hang out in Times Square haranguing the passing crowd. I used to stand and listen to those guys; they were hilarious.
I’d say it is rather exacting, mainly because criticizing David Hogg (who is now an”adult”) and the Parkland students was considered a sacred cow by the Press and any criticism of him or his positions was met with stern rebuke about “picking on kids.” Even pointing out his ludicrous claims about the NRA’s lobbying money was met with righteous mobs of supporters who shouted down the criticism.
But see how the Covington kids were not “off limits” to the press, nor were they treated with kid gloves or even a modicum of fairness (or even dispassionate reporting). The verifiable mob that is going after these students and their families is nothing short of fascism, but the press simply doesn’t see it, because of some stupid hats. The moron banging the drum got caught in not one, not two, but SEVERAL lies and has backpedaled faster than Marty McFly going to 1955, and yet the press is STILL carrying water for him. The “Black Hebrews” are seen on video taunting the Catholic kids with some of the most vile insults and vitriol. Yet the press is still fixated on their bloody hats. Is that an agenda I see them pushing? Sure looks like one to me.
You can glean something quite obvious to us, but not to the greater American people: that is if you’re speaking the “correct” things, the Press will cover for you and protect you and yours. If you hold views the press dislikes, or even appear to, you’re a pariah and “deserve what’s coming to you.” I’m pretty sure that’s the most prominent lesson to take from this, aside from the Press that keeps reaffirming their affinity for fake news. It’s not simply bad reporting. It’s lying.
The assault on these Catholic kids is an assault on G-d.
It used to be that presidential candidates needed to pay at least lip service to religious observance by showing up at a place of worship during their campaign.
The day is coming when the opposite will be true; religious service attendance will be seen as a sign of intolerance.
I’m sure people on Twitter were horrible to him, but there’s a tendency in the online press to equate criticism from the right as an attack, and criticism from the left as pushing back or making a strong case or defending, because they’re the underdogs and voices of reason in this capitalistic hellscape.
The left regards their protests as expressions of self-evident virtue: if young people can be photographed with their faces contorted with rage AND the topic conforms to the accepted parameters of liberal concerns, they are passionate heroes, motivated by justice. If they are equally passionate about abortion or a Constitutional provision the left prefers to wipe away, they are dangerous and threatening. The former is a beleaguered group of Freedom Fighters; the latter are the last angry thrash of the dinosaur’s tail.
I keep remixing the famous – nay, Iconic! Smirking Photo, and wondering how it would be received if the composition was changed.
Young White Girl protesting high abortion rates in the African-American community, photographed smiling at an older African-American woman: straight-up Becky privilege narrative. Six hours on the BuzzFeed homepage.
Young African-American woman who opposed abortion smiling at a 70-year-old white abortion activist: eh, no story here.
Young white gay man smiling at Westboro types haranguing him: big story. Courage and grace under pressure.
Young white gay man smiling at Hebrew Nationalists shouting anti-gay rhetoric: eh, non-story, those guys are whack, although maybe we’ll show his Instagram where he threw some shade
Young Black lesbian smiling at Hebrew Nationalists shouting anti-gay rhetoric: a day on the BuzzFeed LBGTQ page, with a possible angle on how the Hebrew Nationalists incorporated colonialist narratives and learned from Orthodox Jewry’s homophobia, and maaaaybe a paragraph about homophobia in rap lyrics but TBH prolly not, save that for later when someone comes out
And so on. And so on. What it could never be, of course, was just two Americans having a discussion. The implications of that are too monstrous to contemplate.
Not gonna happen. Their “narrative” is all that matters to them.
After eight years of swallowing everything that Jonathan Gruber, Ben Rhodes, and The Won dished out, the poor little knuckleheads have no idea how to do their jobs anymore.
I love analogies and compare/contrast. This is a SERIOUSLY awesome use of the technique!
If I were these boys, I would petition for a legal name change in my local court as soon as I turned 18. The judge(s) will likely be sympathetic and it’s likely that they don’t have any legal barrier to changing their names at this time (i.e. criminal history or to escape creditors). It doesn’t help with the college application process for the seniors, but it will eventually shake them loose of this episode. After college, you don’t put your high school on your resume’ and you don’t want an employer doing an internet search and this event coming up. It is a drastic step to change your name (ridiculous to have to seriously consider it), but, to get on with life and get this behind them, it is worth consideration.
I’d never change my name.
Better to sue for damages
There’s an interesting interview of Bari Weiss on the Joe Rogan show here. I’ve only watched the first 20 minutes or so, but they discuss the dreadful press reaction to the Covington story.
Interestingly, they both state that they had a highly negative, visceral reaction to image of the “smirking” white Catholic conservative kid and the old Indian guy. I found this to be an extraordinary expression of inherent hate for whites, Christians, and conservatives. Both Weiss and Rogan agreed that the story was not what it appeared, and that the media reaction was dreadful, but they shared the initial reaction.
I found this interesting, as I did not share that reaction. I didn’t really even interpret the kid’s expression as a “smirk.” He was smiling and expressing exceptional self-restraint. The old Indian guy was behaving in an absolutely obnoxious manner, and then told absolute lies about what had happened. The big lie was his claim that the teens surrounded him; the truth, shown on the video, was that he approached them.
These are two entirely different scenarios:
Note that the Indian guy is passive-aggressive. He behaves in a rude and confrontational way, while pretending to be peaceful and harmless, as if attempting to goad the teens into a frustrated or angry reaction.
But, according to the twisted Leftist world view, people are not allowed to react to an obnoxious old Indian dude — oops, I mean dignified Native American elder — with anything other than respect and deference. No matter the provocation.
I think that this view is pure racism. I think that it gives the lie to the White Privilege narrative. Quite to the contrary, the person with privilege is the Indian, who is given a pass for outrageous behavior specifically because of his race.
There is one part of the reaction of Rogan and Weiss that I actually agree with. Youths should generally respect their elders. However, this is the conservative position that Leftists joyfully flaunt unless the elder is in a privileged group like blacks or Indians.
Ross Douthat is wimping out.
I began to wonder if something like this was not the case when I noticed how the media kept harping on this man being a veteran. Actually, I thought his claimed military service was just an outright lie.
Rush Limbaugh is correct:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IzFRhhhZAo
This represents a serious escalation in the culture war. I see no end in sight. Everyone who expresses an opinion will live in fear. I suspect lefties did the doxing and hope to taint the right with the same sins they are guilty of. If I am wrong and our side did this, will eat it’s own, then free speech is truly dead. What’s next? Ricochet editors, members, folks on our podcasts? Heck, they doxed Jay Nordlinger, the most mild mannered gentleman you will ever meet. If Trump wins, the left will be angrier. If the Dems win, they will double down and come after our rights and wallets, making us angry. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/never-trumpers-from-national-review-weekly-standard-and-cnn-doxed-after-article-blasted-them-for-hot-takes-on-covington-students/
When the shooting starts, it will be Kansas 1859
While Rogan is incredibly open to talking to almost anyone, he is deeply prejudiced against Christianity. At the same time, he, and most of the commentariat, is operating in complete ignorance of the March for Life.
A long-time pro-life activist called into a radio show the other day and explained that marchers are trained, before marching, to respond to confrontation in this way:
Now, lay that information over the video. Does it suddenly look different?
The boy’s description of his response followed those 3 steps. Good on him, and those who raised and trained him.
I was happy when a solid-leftist friend decried the media lynching of these boys. : no violence or injury. Non-violent protest is sacred.
Happier still to see another solid-leftist friend put in place with full video, to replace clips that distorted the truth.
The truth is out there.