Anatomy Of An Outrage of the Day: Long story short, MyNorthwest.com posted a story regurgitating an exchange between an alleged “local private high school sophomore” named Jessica (no last name given) and KIRO Radio’s right-leaning talk show host Dori Monson, in which the 16-year-old claimed that a third-grade teacher at a public school (which she declined to identify) where she was volunteering told her to call Easter eggs “Spring Spheres.”
It’s a week later and not a single person or place involved in this story has been identified, and no one else has come forward to make a similar claim. In fact, Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel said that, despite the story going viral and the slew of angry e-mails and calls, “we haven’t heard if or when it happened.” The district reiterated its “Religion and Religious Accommodation” policy, adding that “There are no new District policies on religion or holiday observance guidelines.”
But that didn’t stop the media from picking up “Spheregate” as accepted fact and blowing it beyond all proportion. “Political correctness takes away ‘Easter’ eggs,” laments The Washington Examiner; “US school renames Easter eggs ‘spring spheres’,” declares the Toronto Star; “War on Easter?” inquires UPI. Yet not a single second source among them.
Putting aside for a moment the fact that a school teacher supposedly referring to an egg as a “sphere” casts additional doubt on the veracity of this story, shouldn’t the lack of any evidence beyond a surname-less high school student’s say-so on a radio program warrant at least a caveat or two in the news media’s copy-paste coverage? If an unverified anecdote is allowed to balloon into an unequivocal truth, who among the breathless publications anxiously exploiting this non-story will embrace blame when this pretend persecution yields preemptive self-defense?
[mynorthwest / seattlepi / video: buzzfeed.]
