WASHINGTON -- First Buzzfeed News ran a story Jan. 16 that asserted President Donald Trump told his long-time private attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about talks with Russia about a Trump Tower in Moscow. The sources? Two anonymous federal law enforcement officials.
By Friday of that week a thin gruel of a story had put cable news in a ferocious feeding frenzy as pundits breathlessly pronounced that if true Trump should be impeached. Yes they jumped on an anonymously sourced story that they wanted to be true then cagily waved the if true disclaimer just in case reality intruded.
They would have continued to say if true for days even as no other news organization could verify the Buzzfeed piece had not Special Counsel Robert Muellers office ended their glee by issuing a statement roundly debunking it.
To recap the story was wrong and the only reason to give it credibility was runaway bias. While many journalists hung back and waited to learn more the public saw an endless spool of anti-Trump pundits who were rewarded for their poor judgment with on-air time and knowing nods.
The next day another epic media fail was born.
A brief video clip of a white male high school student in a Make America Great Again hat staring silently as a Native American activist stood before him beating a drum and chanting was unleashed on Twitter. A rush to ill-informed judgment followed.
The left dusted off every stereotype in its vault. Twitter users described the moment as a confrontation between smug privileged white teens and a besieged Vietnam veteran proud of his Native American heritage.
CNN contributor Reza Aslan tweeted Honest question: Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kids?
In a classic case of confirmation bias mainstream news outlets went with that narrative that placed the blame on teens in MAGA hats. The Washington Post reported that the high schooler was wearing a relentless smirk. The story reported the assertion of Nathan Phillips the Native American drummer that the kids were shouting Build that wall even though the story noted there was no video of the students chanting about a wall. Standards?
The Post story also framed Phillips as he wanted to be framed the hapless man in the middle who was forced into unwanted confrontation.
Later conservatives posted a video that showed that Phillips rather than being surrounded by students as he had claimed actually had approached the students.
The paper also ran a correction on its reporting that Phillips served in Vietnam. He did not.
Nick Sandmann the MAGA-hat wearing teen released a statement in which he denied smirking and maintained that he chose to remain silent and expressionless because he didnt want to inflame a tense situation.
Many who posted nasty tweets about the students from Kentuckys Covington Catholic High School deleted them. Some even apologized.
Alas others argued that white Catholic teens were not entitled to the benefit of the doubt. When White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said shed never seen people so happy to destroy a kids life an unrepentant Aslan tweeted She means a white kid. Brown kids? Well they belong in cages.
Actress Alyssa Milano refused to walk back the tweet she had posted on the standoff by the Lincoln Memorial: The red MAGA hat is the new white hood.
Noting that the students were on the Washington Mall waiting for a bus after participating in the anti-abortion March for Life Milano argued Lets not forget -- the entire event happened because a group of boys went on a school-sanctioned trip to protest against a womans right to her own body and reproductive healthcare.
Translation: Conservatives are fair game.
Conservatives are fair game for virtue-signaling conservatives. Twitter has turned into a forum in which people prove their goodness by berating others as unworthy and conservatives also trash-talked the students from Kentuckys Covington Catholic High School.
In the heat of the pile-on the National Reviews Nicholas Frankovich tweeted As for the putatively Catholic students from Covington they might as well have just spit on the cross and got it over with. Frankovich later apologized rightly copped to being preachy and rhetorically excessive and deleted the tweet.
When Trump first entered the White House there was a concerted move to keep him off Twitter because even his own staff was concerned that his often combative bursts on Twitter were well unpresidential. Like Aslan today he would make assertions of questionable accuracy but stand by them anyway. Two years later we are all unpresidential and social media in reality is anti-social.
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.
