Is the Santa Claus-dying kid story made-up b.s.?

Not unless he misled editors. "Santa" is real. Just perhaps a patholigical liar.

And if you fired the Knoxville reporter, wouldn't you have to fire everyone else who wrote or aired the story with no additional details?

 

Thanks, YF. See you in 2019.

 

The difference between this story and "Rolling Stone" is that Erdely let Jackie Coakley fucking start firing on every kid and administrator on UVa's campus and didn't try to contact most of them.

 

How about firing the editors who didn't say, "No, we're not running this yet, because it might be bullshit"?

 

I feel like people are allowed to make a mistake, particularly one that didn't really hurt anyone. I'm not always as ready to fire everybody as the rest of the world seems to be. The college fan base I wrote to wanted to fire me on a weekly basis.

 

Your mother tells you she loves you, you check it out.
Santa says a kid died in his arms at a local hospital, you check it out.

 

One critic who commented on the Knoxville News Herald's Facebook post for this story got the reply "Do your own research. It's not a fake story."

 

My point is that people so often go after the reporter in these cases. Editors are supposed to be the buffer on shit like this.

I don't think any of them should necessarily get fired. I've said to writers and I was told by editors "This doesn't feel right, you need to do more reporting" too many times to count. The editors are just as accountable. That's their job.

 

I also think the fact that this reporter heard this second hand then was able to reach Santa to "confirm" it probably contributed a great deal. I bet if "Santa" called the guy to pitch the story, the BS detector would have worked a lot better.

But you heard this rumor of this great Christmas story and go through the hoops of tracking it down then you are less likely to throw Santa under the bus by insisting on getting the name of the kid or nurse, etc. And organizations throw off reporters all this time by claiming something is a HIPAA violation so that's normal.

 

How about USA Today's decision to run it?

 

I have no leniency on this one. If the story is false, because the veteran reporter failed to do basic fact-checking on such a dramatic story, the paper is a laughingstock on a national level.

 

I think that's a big reason that Erdely believed Jackie Coakley, as well. People at the UVA advocacy club told her about Coakley's story, and put her into contact with her.