So, led by ESPN, instead of doing basic journalism and waiting for at least some actual facts to come in, the entire industrial media complex rushed to judgment and allowed virtue-signaling to completely overtake any sense of rationality, or even basic common sense. It never even seemed to occur to them that, with track access extremely limited due to COVID-19, catching someone who did this would be incredibly easy and, therefore, someone who works in the NASCAR community would have to be willing to destroy their entire life in order to make an incredibly stupid and racist gesture.

But having no photo, no rational theory for how or why this happened, and no suspect, is no longer any sort of hurdle for the modern news media to become deeply invested in an enticing narrative, no matter how nonsensical. In this case, given NASCAR’s perceived race issues, and the fact that this happened in Alabama, made it particularly easy for critical thought in the liberal media (and yes, the sports media is at LEAST as liberal as the “mainstream” media is) to be instantly thrown out the car window.

There are those who will, with sincerity, argue that this fiasco was actually NASCAR’s fault because it told the news media that this was a noose and that the FBI was now investigating. Didn’t the news media just understandably rely on what they were being told by an organization that would have no incentive to say that a noose was found in Wallace’s garage?