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WashPost 'Fact Checker' MILDLY Chides Biden, Press on 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Tale
mrc NewsBusters ^ | July 10, 2022 | Tim Graham

Posted on 07/10/2022 1:06:24 PM PDT by Morgana

This story was "too good to check" for the liberal media -- a ten-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. On Saturday, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noticed it when Joe Biden used it. "This is the account of a one-source story that quickly went viral around the world — and into the talking points of the president."

On Friday the president claimed:

“This isn’t some imagined horror. It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.”

But Biden was late to the game -- last Sunday, CNN host Dana Bash repeatedly threw this alleged offense in the face of conservative Gov. Kristi Noem. CNN just assumed it was true, and an ambitious Republican politician is never going to suggest it's sketchy.

The Indianapolis Star reported that abortionist Caitlan Barnard "received a call from ‘a child abuse doctor’ in Ohio who had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant." The Star reported that the child "was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care."

Kessler underlined "There is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained." The Star put out a lame statement that "the facts and sources...are clear."

That's not transparency! That doesn't build confidence in newspapers! Kessler noted this one-source anecdote was treated as fact all over the globe, and he included CNN's Dana Bash.

Kessler added that "Under Ohio law, a physician, as a mandated reporter under Ohio Revised Code 2151.421, would be required to report any case of known or suspected physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect of a child."

But the abortionist wasn't talking.

Bernard declined to identify to the Fact Checker her colleague or 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.

Dan Tierney, press secretary for Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), said the governor’s office was unaware of any specific case but he said under the state’s decentralized system, records would be held at a local level.

Kessler said he checked it out: "we contacted child services agencies in some of Ohio’s most populous cities, including Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo. None of the officials we reached were aware of such a case in their areas." Did this actually happen?

Kessler concluded:

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.

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.

If Donald Trump picked up a story like this, Kessler would assign Pinocchios. As usual, there were no Pinocchios for Biden, and his take on the "presidential imprimatur" on this possibly mythical event is so mild that you could interpret it as "Oh, it's a fact now."


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: abortion; andagain; prolife; rape; roevswade; wapo; washingtonpost

1 posted on 07/10/2022 1:06:24 PM PDT by Morgana
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To: Morgana

Proving that even at the very highest levels liberals don’t care about the truth, only what they feel and want to believe is true. That’s good enough for them. There are many, many examples of liberals just completely making things up for the sole purpose of having the media repeat it over and over again until people buy into that emotion.

Remember when liberals claimed that domestic abuse significantly during Super Bowl games? No evidence. No data. But it was repeated as fact many times over. Globull warming. Same thing. The hockey stick has long been discredited but is still breathlessly reported as scientific fact.

That’s how the left plays this game.


2 posted on 07/10/2022 1:16:37 PM PDT by Obadiah
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To: Morgana

If you tell the lie often enough, it becomes fact checked automatically.


3 posted on 07/10/2022 1:16:53 PM PDT by exnavy (Grow your faith, and have the courage to use it.)
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To: Morgana

Libs keep creative writing classes busy trying to come up with sob stories they can pass on to the fawning media.

Instruction: Make it sad. Make it make the Dems/media salivate for it. Bonus points if it gets repeated by a politician.


4 posted on 07/10/2022 1:16:53 PM PDT by TomGuy
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To: Obadiah

Leftists truly believe that if they are bold enough to say it, then it must be true. The concept of ‘facts’ is how cisgendered whites oppress minorities.


5 posted on 07/10/2022 1:21:16 PM PDT by jjotto ( Blessed are You LORD, who crushes enemies and subdues the wicked.)
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To: Morgana

When the WAPO mildly chides their god biden, you know that he committed an enormous whopper of a filthy blatant deliberate lie.


6 posted on 07/10/2022 1:28:04 PM PDT by I want the USA back (To get the USA back - we have to recover from the current wave of insanity.)
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To: Morgana

Also, does Ohio’s law actually say ‘6 weeks’, or is it linked to development like nearly all of those?


7 posted on 07/11/2022 7:32:13 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Morgana
The fact checkers can't even get what he said right.

Pedo Peder didn't say: "to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life."

Dopey Joe said: "to seek to terminate the presidency and maybe save her life."

The guy is a retard.

8 posted on 07/11/2022 7:39:44 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: Morgana
Update...

BREAKING: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost says there is "not a whisper" that a 10-year-old child was raped and impregnated, there has been no request for crime lab results, and that Ohio's heartbeat law would have allowed such a young girl to get an abortion in the state. (THREAD)

9 posted on 07/12/2022 3:33:22 AM PDT by mewzilla (We need to repeal RCV wherever it's in use and go back to dumb voting machines.)
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