Two leading publications fuddled the facts in a few recent and really compelling stories dealing with police and the coronavirus.
The Atlantic published an account by activist Derecka Purnell, who explains her journey toward embracing police abolition by recounting a traumatic childhood experience. “The first shooting I witnessed was by a cop,” she wrote.
Only it wasn’t a cop. It was a security guard, as a thorough vetting by the Federalist exposed. The article, published originally on July 6, was finally corrected on Monday to reflect this and other relevant errors that kind of deflate her case for abolishing the police.
The other case, published in the New York Times, tells the story of a man who allegedly attended a “COVID party” and then died from the virus in a San Antonio hospital. The story cites Dr. Jane Appleby, chief medical officer at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, who said that before he died, the man told his nurse, “I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not.”
In the original story, this sentence follows the man’s statement of regret: “Dr. Appleby said she was sharing the story to warn others, especially in Texas, where coronavirus cases are surging.” In an updated version, the paragraph succeeding “I made a mistake” reads, “Health experts and public officials have cast doubt over whether ‘Covid parties’ are a real phenomenon, and past reports of such parties have fallen apart or remained unconfirmed upon closer examination.”
The original version buried the fact of health experts’ skepticism about COVID parties well beneath mind-grabbing data on Texas’s coronavirus cases and deaths.
There are a number of other structural differences between the two versions, including differing headlines. Also, the original story’s sub-headline said, “’I thought this was a hoax,’ the man told his nurse, a hospital official said.” It has since been edited to say, “Health experts have been skeptical that such parties occur, and details of this case could not be independently confirmed.” Additionally, the second version includes a comment from a hospital spokeswoman, which wasn’t included in the original story.
There is no editorial note explaining that, or why, any changes were made. More disturbingly, there was in the original version an obvious glossing over of skepticism about whether such parties are occurring and an even more serious lack of any corroborating details about it all.
And so we’re left wondering whether or not the man ever attended such a party or whether he even said what he had been alleged to have said. The New York Times obviously also decided that the case was less believable on its own and so significantly restructured the story, adding a new account from the spokeswoman.
With these stories, both it and the Atlantic look less like traditional publications and more like willing participants in New Journalism, where what’s most important is the nebulous “spirit” of the story, the lesson. As Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review argued, the New York Times account really reads more like a morality tale than a news story.
Of note: Both the police and virus are highly charged issues, and the publishing vehicles for these stories are partial to particular dispositions — namely, a sympathy toward police abolitionism and a buy-in on just about anything you hear about the virus. In both cases, the lack of firm evidence supporting the accounts and the many edits challenge the very lessons which the editors hoped readers would take away.
