Sandmann’s case may turn on whether the “actual malice” standard established by the landmark 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan applies. The key question here for a judge to decide could be whether Sandmann is considered a public figure, with a much higher burden of proof, or a private one—just another high-school student who, through no fault of his own, found himself in a maelstrom. The experts are divided over how that’s likely to be decided.

After the Post and other major news organizations linked to the first video and began reporting on the episode, a narrative soon emerged in which Sandmann and his Covington Catholic classmates were depicted as menacing Phillips and making racist taunts.

The Post reported on its website and in the newspaper on a “tense scene” near the Lincoln Memorial, and noted that Phillips said in an interview that he had felt “threatened by the teens and that they suddenly swarmed around him.”

Surrounding Phillips, the Post reported, describing the video images, “are a throng of young, mostly white teenage boys, several wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ caps, with one who stood about a foot from the drummer’s face also wearing a relentless smirk.”

The Post did not identify Sandmann by name in its initial report. In its editor’s note last week, the Post said, “Subsequent reporting, a student’s statement and additional video allow for a more complete assessment of what occurred, either contradicting or failing to confirm accounts provided in that story—including that Native American activist Nathan Phillips was prevented by one student from moving on, that his group had been taunted by the students in the lead-up to the encounter, and that the students were trying to instigate a conflict.” The Post’s statement also linked to a third-party-investigation report commissioned by the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School, which the diocese says “exonerate[s] our students.”

Whatever story line could be taken from the first viral video was blurred by many others that soon emerged, and by the time they had all been viewed and weighed and scrutinized, a different and more complex narrative existed. “As of this writing, it seems that smiling boy, Nick Sandmann, is the one person who tried to be respectful of Phillips and who encouraged the other boys to do the same,” Caitlin Flanagan wrote for The Atlantic five days after the encounter, having watched every video she could find of the moment. “And for this, he has been by far the most harshly treated of any of the people involved in the afternoon’s mess at the Lincoln Memorial.”

The scene at the Lincoln Memorial that Friday in mid-January was a complicated clash comprising various individuals and groups. In addition to the Native American activists and the Covington Catholic students, a third group was also present, the Black Hebrew Israelites, a sect that believes it is descended from the 12 tribes of Israel. The Israelites posted their own video from that afternoon that lasts an hour and 45 minutes. In this rendering, it is the Black Hebrew Israelites who hurl racial taunts at the Native Americans. The Covington students seemed to have been caught between the two, having gathered to see what was going on as they waited for their bus.