Back to basics: questioning the pregnancy pact
Last week, Time magazine reported that Gloucester High School’s pregnancy rate soared because a group of sophomores planned to get pregnant together.
Today we hear that initial report is unfounded. Why? Where was the breakdown in reporting? Kelley McBride has a great column up on the Poynter Web site about the Gloucester, Mass. pregnancy pact. Time quoted the high school’s principal as saying “They made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.”
The local paper, the Gloucester Daily Times, tells a different story.
From McBride’s column:
First, sure the principal used the word pact and Time quoted him saying it. But there was no other reporting quoted in any of the stories that backed up the existence of a pact. No pregnant girls from the town describe an actual plan. … There are a lot of people describing intentional pregnancies, but there’s a long way between intentional and a pact. This is especially true when you are talking about teenagers, who make a lot of plans they never execute and often suffer consequences for things they do without thinking at all.
The only source reporting a pact was the principal. Even the pregnant teens themselves said they did not have a pact. I’m not sure how Time allowed this clear disconnect into their magazine, but then again if I had a principal I know tell me there was a pact, then it probably would’ve gone in print.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
these girls still are dumb for getting pregnant in high school, pact or no pact. the baby borrowers is premiering tonight, if i had a daughter i would force her to watch. it’s on nbc at 9.
June 25th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I agree with you.
If a source I trusted told me it was so, then I’d generally go with it. But this is a learning experience for the rest of us. We need to question to what extent we will include secondhand information.
Several months ago I was reporting on an attempted murder case in which one teen, a football player, was accused of shooting another teen. My source, a detective, told me the accused was the star running back and I printed that. But it brought A LOT of backlash from others at the school, especially the football boosters and the football coach (they are big on football here in the south lol).
As I’m told, we must trust but verify.
Can’t say I fully blame Kingsbury though, if Sullivan told her that.