The video describes a series of events where there were high school students from Covington Catholic high school who had come from a protest on the rights of women and their unborn children. They were assembling at the steps of the Lincon Memorial as they waited for a bus to take them back to school. On the other hand, there was a handful of black Israelites who were holding a match to raise awareness on the plight of indigenous people like themselves and the issues that affect them globally, like diabetes, missing and murdered women, climate change, and obesity. The indigenous group got to the Lincon Memorial steps, and it is said that they started throwing unkind words to the students. The students respond by chanting back. The students number kept on increasing, and the situation was now tense. One of the Indigenous people of Indian origin by the name Nathan Philips saw the need to cool the tension. He beat his musical drum and sung their indigenous prayer because that is the only way he knew how. As he is singing a student known as Nick Sandmann stood in front of Mr. Philips as if to suggest a standoff.
The social media narrated the story as if to suggest that there was a racist confrontation between Mr. Philips and the student, and that portrayed the former as if he were attacking the students while in the real sense he was trying to calm them. The writer, Hassan Piker, feels that the confrontation between Philips and Sandmann cannot qualify as a racist confrontation but a group crash that could happen anywhere. Additionally, he thinks that the high school students were portrayed to be good than they really are. He talks of an earlier part of the video where the Covington Catholic students are seen behaving just like any other boy would behave and are seen yelling and provoking young girls on the streets for no reason. He feels that Americans highly favor the white child at the expense of their counterparts who may be coming from a disadvantaged background. I would trust Hassan Piker as a credible source because he shows some facts relating to the narrative backed by the evidence he explains in the video clips.
One of the fallacies that is demonstrated in the story is that of distorting facts. In one on one interview with Mr. Philips, he narrates that his motive was to cool off the surging crowds and not to attack the students. Nick’s parents, on the other hand, are said to have hired a Public Relations firm to distort the facts and portray the boys better than they were.
Hasty generalization is also another fallacy that can be seen in the media reporting on the story. Just because there was what seemed like a confrontation between indigenous people and white students, nobody bothered to get the real story on what happened, but they quickly ran into conclusions.
Hassan Piker challenges everyone to seek to know the facts before jumping into hasty conclusions.