By now you are almost certainly sick of hearing about Covington Catholic. If not from the initial media blitz surrounding the footage of some MAGA-adorned teenagers racially taunting Native American activist Nathan Phillips, then certainly from the deluge of mea culpas when Reason writer Robby Soave posted an hour long video that claimed to shed new light on the incident.
The new video shows footage of a group of Black Israelites hurling verbal abuse toward the students until Phillips intervenes. Apparently for many in the media this was an act of transferable aggression that gave much needed context to the infamous video of the students then surrounding, yelling in the face of, and otherwise demeaning Phillips.
If I have to point out to you the white supremacist framing necessary to believe that verbal abuse from one group prompts or justifies the racial harassment of a separate and distinct other, I do not suggest you continue reading this post.
For those who would venture further…
But Robby Soave, for one, is actually certain that it does justify it. In fact, NPR had him on their live radio show “On Point,” so he could say as much. “The broader context makes it abundantly clear that fault for what happened belongs with the Black Hebrew Israelites, and then Mr. Phillips who misled the media,” said Soave.
Given the nature of viral videos, the idea that Phillips somehow misled countless media members who surely encountered the video on their own accord is plainly delirious. The longer video doesn’t even dispute that Phillips was surrounded and taunted by the students, it simply begs the audience to consider if they agree with the motivated reasoning of Soave in concluding that racism is okay if you feel you’re being provoked.
Pundits and journalists alike, of course, submitted willfully to self-excoriation in the wake of what could be construed as evidence of potential bias or a knee-jerk reaction to broad-day racism. As Laura Wagner of Deadspin reported, outlets such as The Atlantic, the New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post, and Bustle among others, all raced to publish articles claiming that new information had complicated things.
How Complicated?
Celebrities who had chimed in previously on the incident raced to repost the letter Sandmann, the teen at the center of the video, had drafted with the aid of a publicist. He was then invited to the White House and onto NBC’s Today show to be interviewed by Savannah Guthrie. The latter, it should be noted, serves as a brutal critique of television media on its own. Sandmann’s mother and presumably the one who hired the publicity firm for her son – who also made headlines for blaming “black muslims” for the incident – is a vice president with Fidelity Investments, a buyer of a significant amount of ad time on the NBC network.
Soave himself said on NPR’s radio show, “It is the role of journalists to question what they see,” so it’s a little embarrassing then that a video which does not exonerate the students in any way was all it took to get several major news outlets to accept the narrative literally being pushed by the student’s publicist.
More than meets the eye
What this means for the average citizen is that major news outlets are – still – deathly afraid of appearing potentially bias to people that absolutely agree with the implicit and explicit messages of white supremacy the Covington teens are shown clearly endorsing.
Why else would they have not then re-reversed on their apologism for the teens when it surfaced that at a basketball game in recent years they had several students show up in full body-painted, detailed-for-minstrel-show-likeness blackface?
Or that the students had been heckling women with rape threats long before conflict with any other groups that day?
Or immediately before the original video where one member of the group can clearly be heard shouting “It’s not rape if you enjoy it!”
If you’re a member of the media or someone with a vested interest in defending racists and misogynists you probably already have deflections to offer. Respectively: ‘It was a school event!’; ‘They must have been provoked!’; and ‘One of those kids says the kid who yelled it doesn’t go to Covington Catholic!’
I myself went to a private all-guys Catholic high school that did black-outs at school games. Weird that no one I can recall ever showed up in body paint or blackface. And I suppose I should be glad for the education I received there as I’m not gullible enough to look the other way when a kid standing shoulder to shoulder with the one yelling about rape in front of a camera realizes he should disclaim possible association, even though he says and does nothing else.
Who cooks the nothingburger?
So in light of this, there’s little else to say but that media are guaranteed to continue making these mistakes. Prizing a sense of faux-objectivity over reporting of potentially controversial truths means that stories like this will continue to be explained away rather than confronted for their reality. Instead of leading readers and listeners to a newsworthy story, the goal is to guide you away from what is obviously true and toward a more conjured, gilded nothing.
Meet your press, the Nothing Dealers.
Kyle is a four-letter word 