When Donald Trump rose to power, he spent much of his time in office denigrating the mainstream media, often portraying them as “fake news”.
The reason was that Trump was receiving an inordinate and disproportionate amount of negative news coverage, thanks to the overt bias of the infotainment industry…an issue that few in cable news have attempted to rectify after being so accused.
In one of the most egregious cases of “fake news” in recent memory, a number of news sources displayed a photograph taken of Nick Sandmann – a student from Covington Catholic School – who was on a field trip to the nation’s capital when his class was confronted with a number of provocative Native American protesters. Nick attempted to awkwardly smile in the faces of the irate and shouting demonstrators, who were all several times his age.
That photo went viral because Nick was wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, and his uncomfortable smile appeared condescending without the context of the situation.
Sandmann would go on to sue several major news organizations for their use of his likeness, and CNN is the latest to settle with the young man.
CNN has agreed to settle a $275 million lawsuit brought by Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann over the network’s coverage of a confrontation involving himself and his classmates and a Native American man during a school trip to Washington, DC, last year, FOX 19 reported Tuesday.
The terms of the settlement were not publicized during the hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington, Kentucky. Sandmann sought $800 million in damages from CNN, the Washington Post, and NBC Universal. Lawsuits against the latter news outlets are still pending.
“This case will be tried not one minute earlier or later than when it is ready,” Lin Wood, an attorney for the student, said of the lawsuits.
The kerfuffle over the photo led many Americans to see the media as a biased cabal who simply ran the photo in order to associate the MAGA crowd with intolerance, due to Sandmann’s accidentally snide expression.
