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

... or at least one of the hospitals (if for no other reason than backing Santa is good PR) by now I would've said "Yep, that happened here." So far, all I've seen have been hospitals saying it certainly didn't happen at their place.

 

Not everyone forwarded that story. I expect a correction.

 

I'm guessing the Russians planted the story, and the alt-right wingnuts will rally around it.

 

Did the News Media Fall Too Fast For the Viral Story of Santa and the Dying 5-Year-Old Boy?

• Isn’t early November in Tennessee a bit early for a dying child to be obsessing about Santa so much that a nurse decides to take it upon herself to rush St. Nick to the hospital? And if Santa was rushing to the hospital on no notice in early November, how is it that the parents had a wrapped Christmas gift ready for Santa to give him?

• Does it not seem odd that the parents of an imminently terminal five-year old would allow him to be totally alone (as Schmitt-Matzen makes clear happened) with a complete stranger? Also, I’m not a doctor, but it seems odd to me that a boy could be well enough to meet Santa, have a very cogent conversation with him, and express joy over having received a gift, all just seconds before dying (of an undisclosed illness). And where are the medical personnel while this is all happening (none are mentioned by Santa)?

• Schmitt-Matzen also adds in the very strange detail that as soon as the boy died he immediately rushed out of the hospital, which, while certainly plausible, is consistent with a storyteller who wants there to be an explanation for why no one remembers him being there (it should also be noted that, because he was in such a big hurry to get to the hospital, he was apparently not in full Santa garb, which is also extremely convenient.)

• How Venable found out about the story also seems strange. As he discusses in a video interview about the story having gone viral, he got wind of this in a whisper-down-the-lane situation which included at least four degrees of separation from Schmitt-Matzen. In all my years of interviewing people I have NEVER found a story which had more than one degree of separation from its source to be fully credible.

• The fact that, in this era of instant news, it took several weeks for the story to come to the attention of anyone in the media should inherently raise concerns. This was Knoxville, not a Third-World country. I have never seen a similar story which took that long to get reported where there weren’t significant problems with the narrative. Even more interesting is that Venable talks about how tough it was to get Schmitt-Matzen to talk on the record about his experience, and even suggests that at one point “Santa” almost backed out from doing so.

• Venable, who seems to have not ever seriously questioned Schmitt-Matzen’s veracity, appears to have been, understandably, blown away by the deep emotion expressed by “Santa.” Whenever a reporter gets hooked into the emotion of a story and leaves their skepticism at the door, there could be issues.

• The indisputable reality is that the only person who has spoken on the record about this episode is the same guy who makes a living pretending to be someone he’s not, and who will now be able to charge a lot more money for his services.

• While Schmitt-Matzen has done other media interviews after it all went viral, including with CNN, the Associated Press had this interesting bit of skepticism at the end of their report: “The News-Sentinel report didn’t include details on the boy or the hospital. Schmitt-Matzen didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.” Also, the fact-checking website Snopes has called the story “unproven,” and could not find a local hospital to verify the claim, which has forced the News-Sentinel to investigate their original story.

• This is exactly the type of story which the news media would be VERY hesitant to debunk, even if they had suspicions, because the risk of being wrong (you went after Santa, you asshole!!) far outweighs the reward for being right (gee, thanks for ruining Christmas, you asshole!).

• Both me and a Mediaite editor have searched for every Knoxville obituary (on the Knoxville News Sentinel’s own website) in the key portion of November, and have so far found no sign of anything close to a five-year-old boy dying.

 

Is it weird that I have not seen this once on Facebook? Have I just blocked my friends perfectly?

 

Did the News Media Fall Too Fast For the Viral Story of Santa and the Dying 5-Year-Old Boy?

LibbiesNeedSarinGas has the hottest take.

 

We've entered my least favorite part of any story like this. All the post-mortems make it clear that most media know how to vet stories, and admit it's a good thing to do.

Yet no one offers a reason why it wasn't done. Just shrugs and misplaced tsk-tsks.

 

The Mediaite piece was written before the News-Sentinel acknowledged its error.

But I guess the easy answer is, no one source stories without verification. I don't know exactly how to phrase that, though. Obviously if the police chief indicates an arrest has been made in a murder, you can go ahead and go with that without making five additional phone calls.

 

No, that's about the time every year when they give up on college football and start looking ahead.

 

"No one source stories without verification" used to be taught in journalism 101. I assumed they had verified, at the very least, which hospital it was, and just didn't name it so as to not take away from the emotion. But they didn't even do that.

I was, and still am, however, inclined to accept a social media post from the actual regiment as verification of his past Army service.

 

My brother said he verified the guy's service through some public record base.

I thought it was a different Regiment.

And finally, I think I first read it via the Indy Star. I think that I thought it had been edited down from the original version.

 

Fuck, the truth hurts.