What you see is often not what you get.
The now infamous video of a confrontation between a Catholic high school student and a Native American elder near the Lincoln Memorial on January 18th shook the cable news landscape like the launch of a Saturn Five rocket. Much of what was left after the first 48 hours of media conflagration was a lot of hot dust and scorched earth. Many were outraged, some were burned, many were confused, and no one was happy.
(I’ve embedded the initially-released video at the very end of this post.)
After a cool-down of a few days, some perceptive commentators noted that what went most terribly wrong in the immediate aftermath of the incident was the dependence on one three -and-a-half minute video, shot from one angle with the camera held almost perfectly still throughout, to convey truth. It was that video— and one intense image in particular pulled from it—that triggered a righteous media blast from the Left. A tweetstorm erupted, blown initially from the Left and soon answered by gusts from the Right, while more, and increasingly ambiguous, information flowed in.