I'm with you. Everyone gets a paddlin' now.
Agree. It's too bad that this story went viral before the full facts were know.
To be clear, the kids, I think, were still acting like brats, but there are plenty of extenuating factors.
There is a lot of negative fallout from this:
1. The kids and school got a bunch of threats (that were never appropriate, for the record, no matter what their behavior was like.)
2. Now the kids are getting made into some types of heroes by the right, which is also inappropriate.
3. People will have the excuse to look at any video clip in the future and just disregard it because "media manipulation." It will lead towards greater divergence in accepted narratives.
BUT, I will also say, the media is in a difficult circumstance here. In 2019 when a story goes viral on social media, that itself is news, so the MSM has to cover it when it happens.
Then more footage turns up and their coverage turned out to be incomplete... the most they can do is offer a sincere follow up.
But still, some people will never accept that their initial mistake was honest (although some of these same people will accept something like a Project Veritas hit job totally uncritically).
Confirmation bias run amok on both sides.
It's just a mess.