The Washington Post published a curious editor’s note last week admitting it had made a series of bad mistakes in January when it falsely reported, based on unreliable social media posts, that a group of Covington Catholic High School student had harassed a Native American protester in the nation’s capital.
Not good enough, say the attorneys for Nick Sandmann, the Covington student who was singled out more than any other during the height of the supposed scandal.
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Efforts by the Post to “whitewash its wrongdoing were untimely, grossly insufficient and did little more than perpetuate the lies it published — lies that will haunt and adversely impact Nicholas for the rest of his life,” said attorneys L. Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry, who have brought a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.
“The Post ignored its own culpability and wrongdoing,” they added. The Post’s general counsel, Jay Kennedy, they went on, “stated that the Post ‘provided accurate coverage.’ It did not and its belated public relations efforts change nothing and fool no one. The Post made no effort to retract and correct the lies it published.”
In January, the Post and other newsrooms rushed to report that Sandmann and his Covington Catholic classmates had abused and taunted an elderly Native American, Nathan Phillips, after the March for Life in Washington, D.C. The students did no such thing, as publicly available footage of the incident shows.
And this is the really frustrating thing about this specific moment in media malpractice: Complete, uncut footage of the Covington incident was available from the beginning, but newsrooms, including the Post, made little to no effort to examine it prior to accusing the students of attacking the Native American protester.
Last Friday, the Post published a halfhearted mea culpa that was more an act of ass-covering than it was a genuine admission of error and regret. It read in part:
[…]
A Jan. 22 correction to the original story reads: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that Native American activist Nathan Phillips fought in the Vietnam War. Phillips said he served in the U.S. Marines but was never deployed to Vietnam.
Too little, too late, say Sandmann’s lawyers.
“The Post did not have the integrity to unequivocally admit its negligent and reckless violations of fundamental journalistic standards documented by its complete failure to investigate the incident at the National Mall before publishing lies about a child,” their statement reads, citing the paper’s own Policies and Standards manual. “The Post did not have the character to apologize to Nicholas and seek his forgiveness.”
They added, “Highlighting its arrogance and lack of contrition, the Post announced its “deletion” of one of its false and defamatory tweets about the incident and Nicholas by re-posting the tweet so that its lies will also forever remain available on the Internet and in social media.”
The letter continued, alleging that the Post’s Johnny-come-lately editor’s note shows the paper hasn’t actually learned anything from the Covington ordeal.
“False accusations against an adult destroy a lifetime of accomplishments. False accusations against children forever rob them of their inherent right to define their lives for themselves and force them to suffer a life tainted and damaged by the permanent shadow of the lies,” Sandmann’s lawyers said.
They concluded by remarking that the Post had doubled down on its lies, writing, “As Nicholas’s lawyers, we will now double down on truth and aggressively continue our legal efforts to hold the Post accountable and obtain justice for Nicholas in a court of law.”
Sandmann is suing the Post for exactly as much as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos paid in 2013 when he purchased the paper.
