It’s the story that’s been read around North America and even shared by the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s serving as a teachable moment for how public figures should deal with brazen racists. And one Canadian politician is being hailed a hero.

The only problem is, the story, as it’s been told, is a total mess and only half the truth.

A few days ago a video emerged of federal NDP leadership candidate Jagmeet Singh responding to a heckler at one of his campaign events in Brampton, Ontario.

A very animated woman gets up and starts shouting and rambling about sharia law and the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing Singh of being in cahoots with the extremist movement.

While the crowd shouts her down, Singh responds by repeatedly telling the woman she’s loved and included. He doesn’t offer her any fuel, so eventually she just goes away.

This clip alone proves Singh’s a master politician and, if he wins the leadership, will give Justin Trudeau a run for his money.

Reporters wrote a simple story about a prejudiced heckler and the man who took the high road to diffuse the situation. Columnists then jumped in opining about racism in Canada.

“Jagmeet Singh explains why he didn’t tell that heckler he’s Sikh, not Muslim”, a Huffington Post headline read.

“Singh is Sikh. ‘Sharia’ refers to Islam, a different faith,” the Globe & Mail headlined on their video of the incident.

This is where it all goes off the rails.

Anyone who’s been following the NDP race - and this obviously includes Singh - would have immediately realized there’s a whole different layer to this tale.

The Liberal government in Quebec is currently working on a bill that bans niqabs from the public service. Jagmeet Singh is 100% against it. However his rivals Niki Ashton and Guy Caron have had more cagey responses.

They’ve both spoken about respecting the Quebec legislature and its promotion of secular values, while also suggesting they’re not crazy about the bill.

Singh has called them out for trying to suck and blow at the same time. He’s got a point.

The NDP would never have become the official opposition in 2011 without an impressive seat count in Quebec. They lost much of that to the Liberals in 2015 and know they need to get it back.

The only problem is NDP sentiment in Quebec is much different than what you find on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver. While Quebecers lean very left on economics, they’re much more open to things like niqab bans in the name of cultural preservation.

When I first watched the video, I guessed that Singh’s position on the ban was actually what this woman was raving about. And, sure enough, she later posted a video to Facebook confirming this was the case.

This doesn’t make her rude interruption right, and one can certainly take issue with her tone and exaggerated fears.

But it does tell us she had a particular policy dispute with Singh and wasn’t mistakenly launching an anti-Muslim tirade against him as an individual, which bursts a large part of the media narrative.

There’s a bigger question, though: The media act like they’re against any glimmer of intolerance, particularly when it comes to Islam.

So much so that the Conservatives' modest citizenship oath niqab ban was drummed up as a decisive issue in the push to oust them in the last election.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a whole subset of NDP members who support a much broader niqab ban and leadership candidates enabling them. And yet the liberal media have practically left them all alone.

The coverage around this one heckler incident is a media fail - full of misinformation and double standards.