The Washington Post dramatically altered its definition of “facts” in support of an unchecked story about a 10-year-old girl seeking an abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Written by Glenn Kessler, editor and chief writer of the Post column “The Fact Checker” since 2011, the article analyzed a story that immediately went viral following the Supreme Court ruling and admitted that no piece of hard evidence has emerged to back it up even though multiple media outlets, including President Joe Biden himself, have repeated the story as gospel.
The story appeared in the Indianapolis Star on July 1 and centered on how women have been traveling from Ohio to Indiana to obtain abortions. Among other claims, the article quoted Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist Caitlin Bernard claiming to have received a call from “a child abuse doctor” in Ohio that had planned to send a 10-year-old girl to Indiana to receive an abortion. The publication did not independently confirm the story and ran with it solely off the testimony of Bernard.
“There is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account,” noted Kessler in the Washington Post fact-check. “The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained.”
When asked, the newspaper’s executive editor Bro Krift said, “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.”
News organizations from the Guardian to the Daily Mail to CNN ran with the story and were not able to independently verify the claims presented by Bernard, who did not even provide the name of the city where the child was located. “Thank you for reaching out. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information to share,” she said in an email.
Despite all of these strikes against the story, including the fact that none of the child protective services in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, or Toledo, could confirm the rape and subsequent pregnancy of a 10-year-old girl, Kessler said the story has attained “fact” status due to viral repetition.
“This is a very difficult story to check. Bernard is on the record, but obtaining documents or other confirmation is all but impossible without details that would identify the locality where the rape occurred,” wrote Kessler.
“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,” he concluded.
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