July 2018, Smith College. A Black student eating lunch in a closed dorm lounge has campus security called on her by an employee. She posts it, the hashtag "eating while Black" goes viral, and national coverage frames it as a textbook case of racial profiling. The college president apologized. FNN found no specific CNN segment, so this page goes after the media's group rush to judgment.

Smith hired an outside law firm to investigate. According to the New York Times (February 24, 2021, "Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College"), investigators found the student was in a lounge that was closed for a summer program, that the custodian had a legitimate reason to call security, and that there wasn't sufficient evidence the call was motivated by race. The Times reported serious fallout for the working-class staff caught up in the accusations.

FNN is not naming the student or the workers. They're private people. The target here is a press corps that turned a viral post into a verdict, then took more than two years to tell the rest.

FNN analysis: when the press treats a social-media post as fact, people with the least power get crushed, and this time it was cafeteria and custodial workers. Gallup 2018 trust: 45%, the last good year. It hasn't been back above 41% since.