It wasn’t enough that the New York Daily News tried to portray Covington Catholic kids at a “blackout” basketball game as being racist. And it wasn’t enough that people posted additional videos claiming, without evidence, that the Covington students demeaned women prior to the video that sparked national outrage due to bad and biased reporting.
Now, even as media outlets apologize for the initial reporting or try to cover their tracks by pretending they were merely rushing “to keep up” with a developing story, some are doubling and tripling down, trying to prove their rush to judgement was justified because those kids and that school really are that terrible.
Enter NBC.
In a tweet sent Tuesday night, the left-leaning outlet insinuated that a gay student was banned from speaking at the school’s graduation because he was gay.
“A gay student who was barred by the Covington diocese from speaking at his 2018 graduation, is ‘not surprised’ by the Covington Catholic High School video,” NBC News tweeted.
The headline for the article, clearly meant to suggest the school is anti-gay, reads: “Gay valedictorian banned from speaking at Covington graduation ‘not surprised’ by D.C. controversy.” This headline actually makes the tweet look more accurate.
Others, including Federalist contributor Chad Felix Greene (who also happens to be gay), quickly noted how misleading the story was, as the student was not banned for speaking because he was gay. “He submitted the speech too late and it was too political for the venue,” Greene wrote.
Also, the student did not even graduate from Covington Catholic – he was the valedictorian from Holy Cross High School. The only thing tying the two schools together is that they are overseen by the Diocese of Covington in Kentucky.
So, basically, NBC found a student from another school to trash Covington Catholic, and insinuated that somehow Covington is anti-gay.
In the second paragraph of the NBC article, they note the student is from a different school, but go on to refer to Holy Cross as “the Covington school.”
In the fourth paragraph, NBC mentions that the student, Christian Bales, “said at the time that he was unsure whether his sexual orientation played a role” in the decision not to allow his speech. The Diocese also barred a speech from the student council president, who doesn’t appear to be gay.
“I honestly have no idea, because what I’ve been taught about the Catholic faith is that it’s about love and tolerance and acceptance of all people,” Bales said at the time.
A spokesperson for the Diocese of Covington said at the time of the incident that the students’ speeches were submitted too late and “were political and inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church.” Bales denies these claims.
But who cares, right? NBC then allows Bales to trash a school he didn’t go to, saying he was “not surprised at all” at the viral video which has since been countered with more evidence.
“It was only a matter of time that something this school community did would blow up to this degree, and I think they need to be held accountable,” he added.
He also said the school is “notorious for being a not-well-disciplined school,” whatever that means.
The media is doing to these teenagers and their school what it did to Brett Kavanaugh and his high school, where they try to find anything they can to prove their biases against people they have deemed villains.