The news media wonders why the “fake news” label keeps getting thrown at them. Maybe it’s because in the wake of the Covington Catholic High School smear, some are clutching to their precious narrative as closely as Gollum held the One Ring.

It’s been reasonably shown that the kids at the Lincoln Memorial were not the instigators of the strangeness and slurs that happened last Friday. Since one of the groups on hand happened to livestream HOURS of this incident, it’s pretty clear that the high school students were confused by what was going on, but they weren’t the ones getting in other people’s faces. The adults in this situation failed. Nathan Phillips told one story as the video showed another.

The media failed because the narrative was just too good to check, and the image was red meat – a kid in a MAGA hat and a Native American elder in front of him. The students of the school have now been actively targeted in an aggressive doxxing campaign, which has included falsely identifying minors.

1) Yesterday was supposed to be a day of celebration for my middle brother Alex, who got married last night. Instead my family had to deal with the fallout of my youngest brother #MichaelHodge being falsely accused for standing & smiling in front of an indigenous man with a drum

— Andrew Hodge (@PikePlaceTechie) January 20, 2019

And apparently Twitter is turning a blind eye to regular accounts AND blue checkmarks who are calling for actual violence.

One of the students at Covington Catholic sent me pictures of the messages he's been receiving thanks to the media smear campaign against him and his classmates. If one of these boys gets hurt, some folks in the media should go to jail for inciting it. pic.twitter.com/z4s0XSKonW

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) January 21, 2019

Verified. Twitter has no TOS for the left. https://t.co/7laNz9yTaD

— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) January 21, 2019

Hey @Jack,

Does @Twitter allow public figures to call for personally identifiable information of a minor to be made public which may put that minor in imminent harm or danger? https://t.co/QrY1PbqD37

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 20, 2019

We’re getting new submissions every 30 seconds. Every member of the media who defamed, slandered, and doxxed the #CovingtonBoys on Twitter will be served.

Each and every tweet will be archived and turned over to the students’ legal counsel. pic.twitter.com/nk4DkQ7AmK

— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) January 20, 2019

The kid in the hat has issued a statement.

Just in: Statement of Nick Sandmann, Covington Catholic High School junior, about the event at the Lincoln Memorial: pic.twitter.com/PkuMh2cVZM

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2019

So, at what point will the news media and rage mob on Twitter, who are insisting that they hear things that others don’t (this is an extreme version of the “Yanny/Laurel” debate as some insist they hear “build the wall” chants and others don’t), cool their jets and let the school actually handle the fallout of the situation however they see fit?

Well, by looks of how desperately the news media wants to keep this on the front burner, never.

Perspective: The Catholic Church’s shameful history of Native American abuses https://t.co/4uqQz07D66

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 21, 2019

What in the name of heaven and earth does this article have to do with a bunch of teenage boys from a Catholic high school, an Indigenous Peoples protest, and the Black Hebrews group (who were the ones yelling slurs)? NOTHING. Why publish it at all? Why, because it makes the Washington Post, and any other news media outlet that reprints it, look SO woke and aware. It is lazy virtue signaling at its finest.

It’s also letting the news media ignore the fact that Buzzfeed smeared egg all over their faces this weekend, and they dug the hole a little deeper. But when has that ever stopped Buzzfeed from having a woke take on a hot story?

One theme of the conversations over the past 24 hours = how deeply familiar this look is. It's the look of white patriarchy, of course, but that familiarity — that banality — is part of what prompts the visceral reaction. This isn't spectacular. It's life in America. pic.twitter.com/TmziDwAjYA

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) January 21, 2019

Is Ben Smith paying you to dig a deeper hole on purpose than Jason Leopold dug for himself this weekend? Blink twice for yes. https://t.co/3f0VyddjSt

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) January 21, 2019

Journalism is dead, and it’s dead because the journalists began to believe that they were a better class of human being because they were taught to string together words into sentences to tell a story. It’s dead because facts don’t matter, only images and headline writers do (because who has time to read the articles?). It’s dead because “being first” is more important than “being right.” It’s dead because when offered a chance to resuscitate it by telling the truth, journalists clung to their images and tweets and headlines and screamed “MYYYY PRECIOUSSSSSS!!!”

Some outlets and journalists retracted their initial reactions and reflected on how the rush to judgement messed this non-story up. Remember, at the heart of it all, this is NOT A STORY. No one was physically injured. Police were not called. There was no physical altercation. There were slurs, chants, and a drum. The only thing that may have been hurt are feelings. And apparently, that’s enough for the news media to release the hounds, knowing that online reputations can rarely be salvaged after going negatively viral, and to keep beating their own drums in a funeral procession for the death of their profession.

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

Featured image via Pexels, Pexels License free for commercial use