Thursday, January 17, 2013

Sports Illustrated Had some "Small Red Flags" On Te'o's Fake Dead GF

I have to say that these are anything but "small red flags."

And what were those "small red flags"? He couldn't find an obit for her online, he said. He couldn't find a death notice. He couldn't find a record of her on Lexis Nexis. He couldn't find "her brother's name to spellcheck it." So he wrote around it. (This is what an ESPN reporter did as well.) He tipped off his editors about this stuff.

Those editors didn't say "wait a minute she isn't coming up in a Lexis Nexis search?" That should have been a pretty big red flag to say the least. She also was supposed to have graduated from Stanford but they have no record of her going there. This is reporter 101 stuff and it seems that the higher-ups at SI decided to bury the flags instead of throwing cold water on a feel good story.

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