The Washington Post has issued a lengthy Editor’s Note on their initial reporting of the incident between Native American activist Nathan Phillips and a group of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.
The note commented on the Post‘s initial report about the incident from January 19. Per the Post . . .
In a Friday night update in the midst of a massive lawsuit, Washington Post tries to quietly acknowledge, and downplay, its layers of false and defamatory reporting on the Covington High School boys who attended the March for Life. pic.twitter.com/acjTbK8FOV— Mollie (@MZHemingway) March 1, 2019
I don't see an apology in there, and I don't see Nick Sandmann, who the WaPo held up for public excoriation in particular, mentioned at all.
John Sexton at Hot Air discusses their editorial hanky panky at some length in Washington Post Publishes ‘Editor’s Note’ About Covington Catholic Story
As for the actual content of the editor’s note, the Post had plenty of time to investigate the story more fully than it did. The videos were circulating Saturday and Sunday showing things weren’t as one-sided as they first appeared. Nick Sandmann’s statement was published Sunday the 20th, which is apparently the same day the Post story went up. But the Post had already committed to Nathan Phillips’ version of events and, according to the story itself, had interviewed him Saturday. It sort of looks to me like they weren’t too interested in investigating much beyond confirming the biases of every left-wing hack shouting about this over that weekend.But is it too little, too late? Hans Spakovsky writes How Covington's Nick Sandmann could win his longshot defamation claim against the Washington Post
The Post could have added this editor’s note more than a month ago. Certainly, by January 23rd it was very clear that the initial story as told by Nathan Phillips was badly slanted and substantially wrong. So why did it take until today, on a Friday evening, for this semi-correction/news dump?
Because a week and a half ago, Nick Sandmann’s attorney filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Washington Post. I’m not an attorney and I have no idea if Sandmann has a solid legal case but it certainly seems as if he has succeeded in getting the Post to belatedly admit it botched this story out of the gate. It’s a shame the facts weren’t enough to do that.
Once you get past the public figure/private person standard established by the Supreme Court, state law is going to apply. In Kentucky, where this lawsuit was filed, you can get damages without proving actual harm if the defamatory statement made against you is “defamatory per se.” That includes: statements falsely accusing you of committing a serious crime; conduct affecting your fitness for office, trade, occupation or business; or having a “loathsome” disease.I expect the WaPoo is setting up to settle for a lot less than the requested quarter billion dollars. He should get enough to pay his tuition to any college, however.
Sandmann’s lawyers argue that the Washington Post’s statements were defamatory per se because they were “libelous on their face” and subjected him to “public hatred, contempt, scorn, obloquy, and shame.” Sandmann has “suffered permanent harm to his reputation” and “severe emotional distress.” His lawyers are also asking for punitive damages because the newspaper published the false accusations “with actual malice” by failing to verify them and by failing to review the complete video that showed what actually happened.
Can he win? Maybe. Rolling Stone agreed to pay $1.65 million to settle the defamation lawsuit filed by the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia after it published an article that implicated the fraternity in a false gang rape story. The Washington Post is probably willing to put a lot of resources into fighting this case in order to avoid encouraging other lawsuits. But just like Rolling Stone, it may eventually agree to a settlement to buy peace.
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