JOHN KASS: Column: ‘Richard Jewell,’ Nicholas Sandmann and the media mob.

While watching Clint Eastwood’s great new film “Richard Jewell,” about the heroic security guard of the Atlanta Olympics who saved lives only to be savaged by the media mob, I thought about another innocent.

Nicholas Sandmann, the kid from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky. He suffered the same kind of agony and humiliation.

It was only a year ago that Sandmann was all over the news, branded as a hateful racist in a MAGA hat. The media got it wrong. Sandmann was in the news again the other day, after CNN settled that $275 million libel suit he filed. Terms were not disclosed.

Jewell and Sandmann were each publicly stripped of their honor through no fault of their own. Yes, “honor” is a terribly old-fashioned word, a bizarre medieval concept to some, but others can’t live without it.

Though the press certainly manages. Plus:

You remember Sandmann?

CNN settled, but NBC is being sued too, as is The Washington Post and others. Let’s hope the dollar amounts, if any, are made public because, as we’re told, democracy dies in darkness.

Sandmann, then 16, was branded as a racist over a video confrontation with an old man, Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who pounded a drum in Sandmann’s face.

A CNN analyst wanted him punched in the face. Other journalists and commentators at major news organizations, and comics, poseurs and wits, called him terrible names and allowed his reputation to be destroyed.

Leftist mobs in the Twittersphere, that oily sea of anonymous partisan hate, clicked on anything that poured more hate on Sandmann. And journalism, desperate for clicks, served him up.

But Sandmann wasn’t a hater. The haters were a group of angry Black Hebrew Israelites screaming horrible racist and homophobic taunts at the Covington kids and at Native Americans.

Sandmann wasn’t doing any of that. He was just a white kid in a MAGA cap, confronted by the old man with the drum, and he smiled, nervously.

And for that, he was flayed by the media.. All of it could have been avoided by the application of another terribly old-fashioned word: reporting.

Lazy garbage people don’t do much reporting. And that’s what most of the press seems to be composed of these days.