Once again, establishment media has buried the truth, reporting attention-grabbing headlines that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS News, Los Angeles Times, and Time Magazine all reported Tuesday that eight-year-old Mili Hernandez was kicked off her soccer team because she had short hair and looked like a boy.
In fact, Mili was not allowed to play because she had been incorrectly registered on the roster as a boy.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Mili’s team advanced to the finals of a tournament in Springfield, Neb. Saturday, but she and her teammates were sent packing after their coach received a call saying they had been disqualified due to a complaint that Mili was a boy.
The Los Angeles Times also ran with a headline claiming Mili was disqualified due to her looks, waiting until the fifth paragraph to point out that organizers cut the girl due to her registration as a boy.
Similarly, WaPo continued the false narrative with their headline “A girl with short hair was kicked out of a soccer tournament because she ‘looks like a boy.”’ The paper buries the discrepancy, mentioning the registration errors in the 13th paragraph.
After the story came out that Mili had gotten the boot, female soccer stars like Abby Wambach and Mia Hamm tweeted their support to Mili.
“Mili, don’t EVER let anyone tell you that you aren’t perfect just as you are. i won championships with short hair,” Wambach wrote on Twitter.
Mili’s father, Gerardo Hernandez, said he was frustrated his daughter had lost her chance to play in the tournament.
“I was mad; I never had that problem before. She’s been playing so long in different tournaments,” he told WaPo.
“There needs to be justice,” said parents of the soccer players, according to CBS.
The soccer association, which makes the rules but does not run the tournament, apologized to the “young girl, her family and her soccer club for this unfortunate misunderstanding,” said TheNYT.
William Bianco, a lawyer for the Southern Sarpy Activities Program in charge of the soccer tournament, told the Omaha World-Herald that Mili was listed as a male on the team roster, which is a rule violation. This reason is why she wasn’t allowed to compete.
NYT, WaPo, CBS, LA Times, and Time are all running with headlines that are either very, very misleading, or just plain false pic.twitter.com/UN0SGbi91o
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) June 6, 2017
The Nebraska State Soccer Association said in a statement that it “would never disqualify” a player from participating based on her appearance, and that “competition rules for U.S. Youth Soccer do not allow boys to play on a girls’ team.”
“To discriminate against a little girl just because of her hair cut is despicable! … stuff like this should not be happening in the United States!” Amsley Pietranton wrote on Springfield Soccer Complex’s Facebook page.
All major news outlets continue to push this false narrative.
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