It went viral first. So viral that governors were interrogated about it and a president relied upon it. And why not, it was a great story if the point was to demonstrate how rigid, insane and dangerous the post-Dobbs laws would be. I mean, who would condemn a 10-year-old to give birth to her rapist’s baby because she was three days beyond the 6 week limit? Horrendous.
But was it true? Not “her truth” kinda true, but factually true in the old school reality sort of way.
It first appeared in the Indianapolis Star, not exactly the national paper of record, The source was an ob-gyn who said she performed the abortion on the child. And from there, the one-source story went viral. After all, there could be no more horrible, outrageous story to prove the point that this was a travesty. And, indeed, that was the problem, as Glenn Kessler, as WaPo fact checker, noted.
The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained. A Gannett spokeswoman provided a comment from Bro Krift, the newspaper’s executive editor: “The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time.”
When a story goes viral, it’s no more nor less of a credible story than if it never made it out of Indy. But it almost seems as if the writers and the paper was being defensive about the story, almost intentionally uncooperative when pressed for corroboration. After all, the more viral a story goes, the more it’s likely to be challenged and the solution to dubious questions are answers.
Where was the corroboration? Where were the usual collateral details that elevated a story from claim to fact? Where were the official complaint of a rape or reports of this having happened to a child? Surely this would appear somewhere, anywhere, other than from the lips of an out-of-state doc who performed abortions, maybe not the most credible source in the first place and certainly one whose cred could use some bolstering when there should have been plenty of bolstering available.
But hey, the president repeated it, and if that doesn’t make it a fact (as long as it’s not Trump), then what does?
With news reports around the globe and now a presidential imprimatur, however, the story has acquired the status of a “fact” no matter its provenance. If a rapist is ever charged, the fact finally would have more solid grounding.
And just like that, the story was flipped on its head, evidence that the people spreading it as true were liars because they didn’t know whether the story was true, there was substantial reason to doubt it was true, and yet they called it a fact because the story was told by people they wanted to believe and, well, it was a great story for their cause.
Remember the UVA Rape hoax? I fell for it. The NASCAR noose story? There have been tons of stories of racist acts that turned out to be hoaxes. It happens regularly with cops, although they’re often put to the test later in court, and it happens regularly on campus with rape and it’s never tested by a court. But news stories that arise to demonstrate one side of an inflammatory narrative at that critical moment when everyone’s screaming about the horror? They’re not always true. In fact, there’s a pretty strong incentive for people to make stuff up for the cause. They can always later claim that at least it started a discussion, even though that’s nonsensical crap.
Except this time, it appears that the story was true.
Update, July 13: The Columbus Dispatch reported that a 27-year-old Columbus man had been charged with impregnating a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had traveled to Indianapolis for an abortion on June 30. Gershon Fuentes was arrested July 13 “after police say he confessed to raping the child on at least two occasions,” the newspaper reported “He’s since been charged with rape, a felony of the first degree in Ohio.”
It’s horrible that it’s true. It means a 10-year-old girl was raped, and hard as it may be by those who so desperately wanted this to be true, this isn’t a good thing. But it means that the initial point, that these anti-abortion laws are creating a terrible and untenable situation, stands. For most advocates, this is all that matters, and the raped pregnant child is collateral damage to the cause. It’s not unfair, as the narrative didn’t rape the kid, and its being true didn’t make her any more pregnant than she already was. But if you want the mantle of most empathetic team, living up to it would be a good start.
But now that the story has received confirmation, what does this mean for journalism going forward? Do they need to verify or just roll with it? Should we expect fact confirmation or just latch on to whatever story proves our priors? Remember “moral clarity”? What about a “new and improved” version, this time without corroboration?
In America after the end of Roe v. Wade, one brave source on the record in the final story will often be the best we can get. Obviously, reporters and editors must make sure that their reporting is accurate and true! But those who believe that the end of legal abortion in many states is newsworthy will need to figure out how to report and publish these stories with a few more constraints than they’d prefer. If performing or receiving an abortion now counts as activism, well, then journalists will need to be okay quoting “activists,” unless they only want to tell the anti-abortion movement’s side.
She’s got a point. Abortion stories were never the sort of thing that normal people wanted splashed on the newspaper’s society page. They were private, quiet affairs, necessary but nothing to be proud of. And now that its being criminalized in laws of dubious reach and meaning, the incentive to keep it quiet is far stronger. So it’s very likely that may valuable stories will stay under wraps, or lack the details and sourcing a good reporter would want or an editor would demand.
Does this mean any story makes the news, corroborated or not? It doesn’t make it untrue, as this story shows, but it doesn’t mean it’s true either, as the Rolling Stone’s apparently deeply verified UVA Rape hoax was. Who wants to be the idiot?
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