Deadspin finally updated the viral story that accused a young Kansas City Chiefs fan of wearing “blackface” after the youngster’s parents threatened legal action against the reporter and the sports outlet.
At some point on Thursday, the website quietly amended Carron J. Phillips’ Nov. 27 takedown of native headdresses and insensitive face paint at NFL games with an editor’s note saying the publication “regret[s] any suggestion that we were attacking” 9-year-old Holden Armenta.
The editors also removed the original header photo that showed Armenta in profile wearing a traditional Native American headdress and his face painted in black and red, two of the Chiefs’ four team colors, at the Nov. 26 game — and revised the headline so that it no longer called out the fan specifically.
The article is now running with a photo of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
“Three years ago, the Chiefs banned fans from wearing headdresses in Arrowhead Stadium, as well as face painting that ‘appropriates American Indian cultures and traditions.’ The story’s intended focus was the NFL and its failure to extend those rules to the entire league,” the editor’s note lamented.
Phillips’ story — which was originally titled “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress” — stirred up controversy when he accused the young fan of finding “a way to hate Black people and Native Americans at the same time.”
The boy’s mother, Shannon Armenta, hit back at Phillips’ reporting in a Facebook post that documented the youngster’s warm reception at the stadium — and revealed that he is actually of Native American heritage.
His grandfather, Raul Armenta, is on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California, according to the Post Millennial.
Phillips, however, refused to back down.
“For the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument that it makes it even worse,” he wrote in a since-deleted X post, according to the Post Millennial.
Holden Armenta later told Fox News that it was “a little scary” to be labeled racist by the media.
His family eventually threatened to sue the publication and the reporter if the story was not retracted.