The Washington Post settled a defamation lawsuit with a Covington Catholic High School student who was the subject of controversial media coverage in 2019 because of a misleading video clip.
Nicholas Sandmann, 18, who was the subject of a viral altercation between his classmates and a Native American man, announced the resolution to his lawsuit against the news outlet on Friday. Sandmann’s family sought at least $250 million in damages for the paper’s reporting that portrayed the MAGA hat-wearing teenager as a racist for smiling in the face of Native American activist Nathan Phillips.
“On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post. Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit. Thanks to [Todd McMurtry] & [Lin Wood] for their advocacy. Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do,” he shared on Twitter. “We have settled with WAPO and CNN. The fight isn’t over. 2 down. 6 to go. Don’t hold your breath [Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey].”
“We are pleased that we have been able to reach a mutually agreeable resolution of the remaining claims in this lawsuit,” Kris Coratti, a spokeswoman for the Washington Post, told the Washington Examiner.
Judge William Bertelsman of the U.S. District Court in Eastern Kentucky and who initially dismissed the case in late July 2019 on the grounds that the paper’s reporting was protected by the First Amendment, reinstated the case in October. But the judge narrowed the number of allegedly defamatory statements from 33 to three.
Shortly after Sandmann filed his lawsuit, the Washington Post issued a lengthy editor’s note that said that “subsequent reporting” allowed for “a more complete assessment of what occurred” that “contradict[ed] or fail[ed]” to confirm what the paper had previously reported about the incident.
Sandmann has already settled a defamation lawsuit against CNN.
