After refusing to retract a story labeling innocent Catholic high school kids harassed at the Lincoln Memorial “racist,” Monday's NBC Nightly News doubled down on the incendiary charge. In a report by correspondent Ron Allen, the network sided with instigator Nathan Phillips despite more video vindicating the teenagers. Telemundo also decided to smear the teens with no mention of the death threats they were receiving.
“This face-to-face confrontation igniting charges of racism. Kentucky high school students accused of mocking Native American elder Nathan Phillips, who claims his drumming was a gesture of peace,” claimed Allen.
Allen singled out junior Nick Sandmann by seemingly suggesting he was the one who started everything because he was “at the center of the controversy.” Instead of providing a straight report about what the longer video clearly shows (the students were the ones being harassed), Allen cast doubt by saying the students “insist this longer video shows what really happened.”
Focusing on their possible punishment, Allen hyped how Sandmann and his classmates could face expulsion. But Allen abdicated his responsibility as a journalist to report how the teenagers were receiving death threats. “Sandmann also said both he and his family have received physical and death threats over the past few days thanks to the social media mob that jumped on the initial story,” Garrett Tenney reported on Fox News Channel’s Special Report that same evening.
On top of that, NBC also failed to report how the radical liberal mob on social media targeted the wrong student (who wasn’t even there) and threatened the lives of him and his family.
“The teens say they faced a barrage of verbal abuse from a group calling themselves the Black Hebrew Israelites,” Allen noted, continuing to try to sow doubt. “Sandmann claims they got permission from chaperones to respond with ‘spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted.’ Philips approached trying, he says, to decrease tension between the two groups.” Allen refused to admit that it was the Black Hebrew Israelites who were the ones shouting racist and derogatory slurs.
In sharp contrast over on the CBS Evening News, correspondent Jim Axelrod accurately recalled how “[t]he kids from Kentucky had been taunted by a small group of African-American provocateurs known as the Black Hebrew Israelites.” Although, CBS also failed to note the death threats.
Allen was also skeptical of Sandmann’s account of Phillis’s actions despite him being caught on video. He also couldn’t be bothered to say Kentucky GOP Congressman Thomas Massie’s name when noting his support for the teens:
Sandmann claims, he “singled me out for a confrontation,” adding, “I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated, or be provoked.” A Kentucky Congressman now backing the students, tweeting, “in the face of racist and homosexual slurs, the young boys refused to reciprocate or disrespect anyone.”
There was no mention of Phillips’s shifting account of what happened. First, they approached him to harass him. Now, he claims, he approached to defuse the situation. There were no questions from Allen about how slamming on a drum in someone’s face was supposed to do that.
NBC even promoted “Native American advocates” (adults) lashing out at the teens. “He got caught doing something that was incredibly racist and disrespectful, and now he's backpedaling,” exclaimed Tara Houska, Honor the Earth’s national campaigns director, to the network.
Meanwhile, ABC’s World News Tonight, reporter Erielle Reshef was desperate to smear the boys and claimed they were “making what appears to be a derogatory chopping motion.” And using a radical leftist attack against Sandmann from social media, she noted he was “smirking” at one point.
Telemundo accused the students outright of hurling “racist gestures.” “While his companions shouted the Kentucky student didn't say a word. His smile directed at an indigenous elder said it all,” correspondent Cristina Londoño also chided, though later in her report she included student Nick Sandmann's statement defending his actions.
Despite this being a cut and dry case of people jumping to conclusions (as was the premise of the CBS report), Allen wrapped up by declaring: “The school and local diocese have apologized to Phillips, a Vietnam veteran, as the search for more video and answers continues.” What?!
There were many in the liberal media who, at that point, had admitted they screwed up and jumped to conclusions and were wrong about that boys. NBC’s refusal to admit that showed just who they were.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
NBC Nightly News
January 21, 2019
7:11:08 p.m. Eastern [1 minute 56 seconds]LESTER HOLT: Back home, new video is giving us a more complete picture of what happened in that viral confrontation between students wearing MAGA hats and a Native American elder at the Lincoln Memorial. Our Ron Allen now on how the student at the center of all this is defending himself.
[Cuts to video]
RON ALLEN: This face-to-face confrontation igniting charges of racism. Kentucky high school students accused of mocking Native American elder Nathan Phillips, who claims his drumming was a gesture of peace.
NATHAN PHILLIPS: I was scared. I was afeared [sic].
ALLEN: But today, junior Nick Sandmann, who’s at the center of the controversy, is speaking out. He and his classmates who face possible expulsion from Covington Catholic insist this longer video shows what really happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: This a bunch of future school shooters.
ALLEN: The teens say they faced a barrage of verbal abuse from a group calling themselves the Black Hebrew Israelites. Sandmann claims they got permission from chaperones to respond with “spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted.” Philips approached trying, he says, to decrease tension between the two groups.
PHILLIPS: I intervened. And things just escalated from there.
ALLEN: Sandmann claims, he “singled me out for a confrontation,” adding, “I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated, or be provoked.” A Kentucky Congressman now backing the students, tweeting, “in the face of racist and homosexual slurs, the young boys refused to reciprocate or disrespect anyone.” Native American advocates say the video speaks for itself.
TARA HOUSKA (Honor the Earth National Campaigns Director): He got caught doing something that was incredibly racist and disrespectful, and now he's backpedaling.
ALLEN: The school and local diocese have apologized to Phillips, a Vietnam veteran, as the search for more video and answers continues. Ron Allen, NBC News.
