Planted stories are nothing new; political operatives have been doing that for generations.
What's new is gathering an instant audience, through Internet social networks, to spread the story far and wide before honest news people--and there are still a few, I think--have a chance to do cursory fact-checking.
Such was the case with the video clip that set off the inflammatory accusations, criticism and denunciation of the Covington boys who were at the Lincoln Memorial waiting for a bus.
National Review at one time was a respected journal of conservative thought. That time was in the late '50s and into the '80s. It was never a news magazine as such; it couldn't, being a bi-weekly with a rather long editing cycle.
No doubt the magazine and its founder/benefactor, William F. Buckley, Jr., were instrumental in getting Ronald Reagan elected President, and Goldwater the '64 Republican nominee before that. Politics was its primary theme, commentary on society a close second. It had some good writers who didn't shy away from the label of conservative, among them some former Trotskyites who had seen the light. Regardless of their often questionable backgrounds, NR's editors and contributors stimulated many conservatives' brain cells with their columns and articles. It was the best, since there was no conservative-oriented competition for a long time, until some upstart at Indiana started publishing an alternative, The American Spectator.
It's too bad we don't have a dozen or more right-leaning political magazines, but that's unlikely these days. Print magazines are destined to go the way of the buggy-whip.
“National Review at one time was a respected journal of conservative thought. That time was in the late ‘50s and into the ‘80s. It was never a news magazine as such; it couldn’t, being a bi-weekly with a rather long editing cycle.”
I used to read it cover to cover from maybe 1977 until the early 1990s; by then it was becoming more of a GOP establishment rag than a journal of conservative thought.
Like you, I found the Indiana era The American Spectator to be great. But I also discovered Chronicles, aka Chronicles of Culture, where they were way ahead of the curve in understanding the importance of the culture war.