Jim George By Jim George
March 2, 2019

Too little, too late, proclaims a title of a piece this morning about the pathetic attempt by the Washington Post to ameliorate its enormous exposure to potentially crippling damages stemming from the –gasp! — lawsuit filed by Nick Sandmann and his family over its disgraceful, dishonest, despicable fabrication of an article about the so-called “Lincoln Memorial confrontation” between Nick and his friends with the poor, beleaguered “Indian chief” and “Vietnam War veteran” who turned out to be as fraudulent as the Post.

Here is the Post’s “apology” in full:

“Editor’s note related to Lincoln Memorial incident
By Washington Post Staff March 1 at 5:17 PM
A Washington Post article first posted online on Jan. 19 reported on a Jan. 18 incident at the Lincoln Memorial. Subsequent reporting, a student’s statement and additional video allow for a more complete assessment of what occurred, either contradicting or failing to confirm accounts provided in that story — including that Native American activist Nathan Phillips was prevented by one student from moving on, that his group had been taunted by the students in the lead-up to the encounter, and that the students were trying to instigate a conflict. The high school student facing Phillips issued a statement contradicting his account; the bishop in Covington, Ky., apologized for the statement condemning the students; and an investigation conducted for the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School found the students’ accounts consistent with videos. Subsequent Post coverage, including video, reported these developments: “Viral standoff between a tribal elder and a high schooler is more complicated than it first seemed”; “Kentucky bishop apologizes to Covington Catholic students, says he expects their exoneration”; “Investigation finds no evidence of ‘racist or offensive statements’ in Mall incident.”

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.”

See any actual apology? Neither do I.

Here’s a common sense report on the “apology” from the piece in the Washington Examiner, linked above:

“The teens abused no one. They mistreated no one. Yet, they were treated like monsters all the same, and all because newsrooms couldn’t be bothered to double-check whether there was a longer, uncut version of the viral footage that had sparked this especially grotesque news cycle. The Covington boys were pilloried, publicly condemned by even their own bishop, and threatened with violence. One student in particular, Nick Sandmann, received the brunt of the hate because he is the most visible of the students captured in footage of the incident.

Unedited tapes of the confrontation between Phillips and the Covington students show the teens were accosted first by Black Hebrew Israelites, a loathsome fringe hate group. The footage also show that it was Phillips who approached the students, not the other way around.

Sandmann filed a defamation lawsuit against the Post in early February, seeking $250 million in damages — the same amount the Post’s owner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, paid for the newspaper in 2013.”

The journalism “profession” has beclowned itself (admittedly a poor choice of words as there is nothing funny about setting out to deliberately ruin young men’s lives) so thoroughly it is difficult, for me at least, to see a return to the august position it once held as a beacon of truth, integrity and honest reporting any time in the foreseeable future.

The title I chose for this post was prompted by a lifetime of filing and pursuing lawsuits on behalf of (mostly!) deserving clients in various courts, State and Federal, and hearing, time after time, lawsuits being called various forms of the scourge of the Earth.
Note to anyone who believes the Washington Compost would have ever published even that sad imitation of an apology without that lawsuit: I’ve got some beachfront property in Montana I’ll let you have cheap.

Sincerely, Jim