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

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I saw a really good point made in the reader comments:

"So...you guys sought him out, wrote the story without meeting your own verification standards, published it and got his face all over the news, and now you're saying it might or might not be true? Wow, I feel pretty bad for this guy, especially if his account is true."

 

Latest fake news?

Man eats nothing but potatoes for a whole year

 

Just that it's getting a lot of traction now that the story was fake.

I'm kind of surprised. I didn't think anyone would care enough to debunk it.

 

No one cared enough, as I recall, to ask whether Kevin Ward grabbed Tony Stewart's race car, when it was fairly obvious from the video of the incident, so I can see your point.

 

Maybe the family hasn't come forward to say he's their son and the story is true, because they were all killed in the Gatlinburg fires. Have you truthers thought of that?

 

If that were found to be true, the loony tunes who so desperately want this story to be true would consider it a true Christmas miracle.

 

If a terribly ill 5-year-old didn't die on Santa's lap, I don't even want to believe in Christmas anymore.

 

People really want to believe a five-year-old died and we are the horrible ones for doubting.

 

Some people in the media never learn. On Monday, we have that sappy Santa story about the dying child, and outlets ate it up. Posted and reposted, despite it being a one-source story very light on verifiable detail. Then, someone gets the idea that it may not be on the up-and-up. People start trying to verify, and the original publisher backs slightly off — they can't verify elements of Santa's story, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's fiction. (Though I believe it is.)

So, days after tripping over themselves to post Santa's story, I see a crapload of the same people breathlessly running stories with the headline that the tale is "unraveling."

Not "may be" or "could be." Whatever happened to journalistic standards?!?!

 

Remember when all the sick children used to speak eloquently and expire peacefully at Christmas?
Those were the days. It's all gone to crap now, and the holidays have gone to heck in a hand basket if kids are not expressing emotionally mature and touching sentiments while serenely passing away.

 

Beats the heck out of me.

 

It is remarkable to me that the one 5-year-old already thinking about Christmas two weeks before Halloween happened to have a nurse who had the biggest attention whoring Santa in the state on speed dial. A true Christmas miracle.

You know who I'm the most pissed at right now? The TV station that breathed new life into this nonsense today by reporting that it verified "critical details," but couldn't tell us what they are. What horseshit.