Who's the bad here? A media drama in 5 acts

Who's the bad here? Trump or indigenous supporters? – A media drama in 5 acts

The roles are clearly distributed

A white teenager with a red cap with "Make America Great Again" silently grins for an elderly man who looks like a Native American and sings peacefully traditional songs for a few minutes. The boy stands in front of the man and smiles. The man sings and drums on a hand drum. In the background, other teenagers are shouting, many with kepis bearing Donald Trump's electoral slogan.

According to the media, young people participated in an anti-abortion demonstration before the meeting. The aborigine, even what you find, comes from a demo for Native American rights. And he is a Vietnam veteran.

Who is the provocateur here? Who was provoked? Who is the culprit, who is the victim? Who is good, who is evil?

Some media are there

The video became viral and some media quickly answered these questions. "The viral video shows the boys to" do America again "hats surrounding the Native Elder", for example, titled The New York Times. "Young Trump fans are provoking the natives," he told Spiegel Online. "Young supporters of Trump deride the aborigines," writes the "Tagesanzeiger".

Millions of people have seen a video on the NowThis media website, in which Nathan Philipps, the indigenous drummers, commented: "We have always looked after the elderly and the children, we took care of her, saying what is good and what is bad, I would like to be able to feel that attitude with these young people too, so that they really make our country great again. "In the middle there were the scenes in which the pupil was constantly smiling in face, in the background you play a sad piano music.

The reactions

The Hate-Storm against the guy, who in the extracted video does not seem really nice, will not be long in coming. He behaved disrespectfully towards the elderly and the natives – as regards the most objective criticism. Even the boy's (Catholic) school comes on and threatens to suspend.

What really happened

The problem: the video shows only a part of what happened.

In fact, it seems to have happened this way: the boys, all students of a Catholic school, participated in the demonstration in Washington. Then they waited for their bus, according to one of the Lincoln Memorial students. They spend time singing and screaming.

A small group of black activists belonging to the Black Hebrew sect got to know the students. According to several student reports, they cursed the boys as "fagots" and told them that Donald Trump was gay too. According to a black student, his classmates would have killed him and sold his organs. The students laughed and sang.

Only then appeared Nathan Philipps, who later said that he had deliberately placed himself among students and activists to defuse the situation. Then he stopped in front of the student and began to drum.

And the moral of the story & # 39;

As these details became known, many media changed their stories or provided suggestions that there was new information on the subject. The surveillance blog of the German media "ÜberMedien" abruptly criticizes the coverage:

White, strictly Catholic, a teenager who supports Trump against an older Native American based on basic moral values? In the end, it was not as easy as it seemed at first sight.

(Tam)