LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID # 10

Dead babies in Kamloops

During Covid-19 one of the most depressing false narratives perpetrated by mainstream news organisations involved the scandalous reporting, and the failure to correct that reporting once the narrative had been disproved, about the purported discovery of the bodies of 215 babies in Kamloops, in Canada. Prominently proclaimed by the BBC on 29th May 2021, the article is egregious in the extreme, because the falsehoods presented there and in other media repetitions of the same falsehoods led to worldwide anger, protests, violence, and the demolition of property (including the widely publicised tearing down of a statue of Queen Victoria in Winnipeg).

The reporting in the BBC article was irresponsible, dangerous, sensational, and clearly untruthful in many ways. Among the most serious of the falsehoods in the article is perpetrated in the title itself: Canada mourns as remains of 215 children found at indigenous school. The first sentence in the article - printed in bold type - states that Unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 children have been found...  and the article proceeds to make various claims that have been proved to be entirely baseless. 

A thoroughly researched refutation of the claims made about the school in question provides ample evidence in repudiating the iniquitous falsehoods presented in mainstream media both then and subsequently, including the BBC article. The above link to the research paper refuting the conspiracy about the dead babies - under the title ‘Not one body has been found’ - also deals with the public outrage and remorse over the original scandalous mis-reporting about the dead babies. A recent book entitled Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) reports on the scandal and its wider ramifications.

Fact-checking the fact-checkers.

In response to an often-publicised invitation to the public to report to the BBC’s ‘fact-checkers’ any subjects that might be suitable for fact-checking, I have on two separate occasions, months apart, written to the organisation about their report (which is still accessible online) saying:

Lest members of the public think that the BBC's acclaimed ‘Fact-Check’ service shines the spotlight on anyone EXCEPT the BBC, I hope the spurious and sensational facts in the article will be repudiated by the Fact-Check team, and that a correction and apology to readers will follow. 

I included the links to both the BBC article and the research that repudiates the spurious claims about the dead babies. In neither case was my email to the fact-checkers acknowledged or responded to.

More recently, I had occasion to re-visit the subject of other fact-checkers in relation to the Kamloops scandal, this time in regard the organisation Full Fact. I thought I'd see how that particular group of fact-checkers reported on one of the most egregious false stories that emerged during Covid. I was pleased to see that they started off rubbishing the widespread conspiracy story that the queen had been involved in the ‘missing babies’ story at Kamloops.  But – and a very large ‘but’ –  in the very same article they say:

It is, however, sadly true that there is evidence that the remains of a large number of missing Indigenous children may be buried in unmarked mass graves on the grounds of Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. 

Full Fact links its phrase ‘there is evidence’ to what, exactly? The link is to the very same BBC article! 

This circularity among mainstream news organisations and their fact-checking supporters is not uncommon: the very organisations supporting the fact-checkers are supported ideologically by those who prefer their sponsors’ facts. A glance at that BBC article is by no means ‘evidence’ of anything other than the BBC’s own misreporting over the fictitious dead babies.

My take-away from the Kamloops saga? The ONLY reliable fact-checking activity involves more information, along with a healthy dose of scepticism towards any organisation claiming to be neutral fact-checkers.

Nobody (including this author) is neutral, and the search for truth must remain a process that is both continuous and continual : Nullius in verba.