“Have you ever seen a more punchable face?” People distrust the media exactly because of milestones like this one, and it was a slow degradation. CNN, the Washington Post, and NBC already had the full video within hours showing Nathan Phillips walking into the Covington kids and drumming inches from Nick Sandmann’s face, but they ran the short clip anyway because it let them call a smiling 16 year old a racist. They promoted Phillips as a Vietnam veteran being mocked even though he never served in Vietnam and was discharged in 1976 with no combat deployment. Sandmann sued, they settled, and he went to college on the proceeds. He was only 16 and they were the most powerful media organizations on earth. Media distrust was entirely self-inflicted.