The NYDaily News reported that Felicia Barahona had an affair with an 18-year-old student. The NYPost said the student was 17. Which is it?(Credit: Google News, screenshot, highlight added)
iMediaEthics finds it frustrating that New York daily tabloids frequently present glaring contradictory facts that are rarely corrected.
As an example, check out battling news stories from The New York Daily News and The New York Post. The topic: A now-fired Bronx science teacher Felicia Barahona and her alleged sexual affair with and pregnancy by a student.
The Daily News’s March 12 story reported that the student was 18 years old and that the relationship started “on the boy’s 18th birthday.” The Daily News noted that its reporting was based on “freedom of information request” for the special commissioner of investigation Richard Condon’s report.
Meanwhile, the Post’s story, published about five hours later according to time stamps, claimed in the headline and story that the student was just 17: “Teacher ‘booted her baby daddy, 17’. “ The Post’s sourcing was “a report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation,” unnamed “school officials” and unnamed “investigators.”
Those unnamed “investigators” reportedly told the Post that the now pregnant teacher “had been calculating in seducing her student— waiting for him to turn 17, the legal age of consent, before bedding him.”
So which is it?
iMediaEthics has written to both the Daily News and the Post and the NYC Department of Education looking for answers. We’ll update with any response.
Contradictory facts among competing reports reduce the credibility for ALL news outlets in iMediaEthics’ view as readers have no easy way to discover the truth or know which news outlet is correct.
iMediaEthics wrote earlier this month about the Post’s botched spelling of Bashid Mclean’s name. Mclean is accused of murdering and decapitating his mother, Tanya Byrd. Despite our emails alerting the Post to the misspelling (the Post used Bahsid McLean) the error remains on the Post’s website.
