On Saturday January 19th, 2019 a group of kids waiting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C was confronted by a Native American man named Nathan Phillips who was playing his drum. A lot of outrage came out about this as a picture showed a group of white teenagers wearing “Make America Great Again” hats gathering around this Native American, the photo showed one man smiling at this Native American man.

Since that day a lot more has come out about this story. Some people have called for death threats on this young man because he was making fun of Phillips. Some have claimed that the media completely lied about this. The original media story that was reported claimed that this group of white men had circled around Nathan Phillips, started to make fun of him, and started to chant “Build that wall.” Depending on what video is shown makes all the difference.

The question being asked is did the media Twist the story or did they just not dig into the story before they reported the story.

Sophomore Riley Roosa exclaimed, “I believe the media completely twisted the story and jumped to conclusions. I believe if the media would have looked into the story and didn’t jump into conclusions then they might have reported this story correctly.”

However, Sophomore Jacy Duffy states, “The media absolutely did not twist the story. I believe that the media reported the story as it was. I believe that the kids did harass him and that the media did report correctly based on what they were given.”  

The original video showed Phillips in the middle of the group of kids with the one kid smiling while he was banging his drum. However the whole event was being live streamed by a group of people across the street. In the full video you see Nathan Phillips approach the Group of Kids.

Phillips has come out and said that he is a Vietnam veteran. Being born in 1955, and with the last American troops pulling out of Vietnam in 1973, it is unlikely that Phillips is being truthful.. The New York Post did some digging into this story and they found out that during this time Phillips was a Stateside refrigerator technician.

It has also been reported that the group of kids chanted “Build that wall!” However when someone listens to the videos they cannot hear the students chanting “Build the wall” around the native american.

From the full video taken off Facebook, Phillips can be seen walking up to the group. Some of the kids chose to move out of the way of  Phillips but the kid seen in the photo decided to stand still and smile. He has received death threats and been portrayed as racist.

More people have come to believe this after this story has come out because of the way the media has twisted the story and the people do not know who is 100% right.

More is going to come out about this story and we will see who right and whether or not we should be calling this kid racist and what news sources are credible.