Does everyone remember Baby 81?
His real name is Abilash Jeyaraj, the “famed” three month-old survivor of the ferocious and nearly apocalyptic tsunami that tore across the Indian Ocean in December, 2004, and wiped out countless thousands of lives with its fury. Abilash was found among the debris a few days after the tsunami struck and was handed over to the Government Hospital in Kalmunai, Eastern Sri Lanka.
We remember Baby 81 because the media seized on the story after it was discovered that nine (and as many as 15) families claimed the baby as their own. Google "Baby 81" and you can quickly observe how much interest there was in this story. The Wikipedia entry on Baby 81 says he was the subject of a “parental identity dispute.”
The fuss stemmed from the fact that all of these different families allegedly made claims on the same baby. One of the mothers reportedly threatened to kill herself if she did not get her baby back. There was a moving photograph and video footage of three women wailing for the child.
Court-ordered DNA tests designed to find out who the baby's real parents are proved that the Jeyarajs are the real parents and the baby was subsequently handed over to them. NBC's Good Morning America had the family flown to New York so they could be interviewed on the show. Abilash even made a television appearance with actress Uma Thruman.
But this story, as reported, is a myth. The Jeyaraj family is the only family that ever attempted to claim Baby 81.
Here's the real story. I have personally viewed the videotapes of follow-up interviews with the people involved, including the Jeyaraj family. Looking at the facts will reveal how and why something that never happened developed into a massively and globally sensationalized post-tsunami story.
During the tsunami, the three-month old baby later known as Baby 81 was separated from his mother, Juanita, and later found by a man who brought him to the Government Hospital in Kalmunai. In the chaos following the tsunami, distraught families flocked to the hospital in search of missing relatives. Many offered to care for the unclaimed child if his parents could never be found. But no formal requests exist in which a mother claims to be the biological parent of this baby.
A few days later the Jeyarajs arrived at the hospital, found young Abilash, and asked the doctors if they could take him home. They were told the baby was not yet healthy enough to be released.
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
A search on "baby 81" right now is interesting -- lots of articles from major news sources reporting about how nine different families claimed the baby, none with any retractions or corrections or anything. Amazing.
2 - Cheesefries
wow.... how gay i just wasted 5 minutes reading this
3 - BOV
WHO CARES?
4 - Eric Berlin
Yes, Lord forbid the news gets reported accurately. Why waste time worrying about that?
5 - Steve C.
Accuracy? Who cares about that when we've got a moving story? :-P
6 - Aaman
Now, if this were a report about how American Idol is a lizard recruiting model, and those who drop out, well, drop in;) - the commenters above would be totally riveted to the machinations of media
7 - Aristus
"Does everyone in the media know it was a lie?"
Probably not. As your article points out, even the doctors who were THERE are fuzzy about the truth now. No one in "the media" is magically immune to the effect of media blitzes. That, and no one really cares. The job of the "media" is to grab people by the emotional gonads and make them feel better about themselves.
8 - Sue
I gotta say...I agree with BOV and Cheesefries in regard to this story.
9 - Eric Berlin
Sue, you're entitled to your position, but in my view that attitude reinforces the ability of the media to throw stories out there that may or may not be fully true.
I personally find it hard to believe that anyone finds that acceptable. If you can't trust "facts," then what can you trust?
10 - RJ Elliott
The "not-entirely-correct story that becomes a global meme" issue is a serious one for the media to deal with.
Thank you for putting this all on the record...
11 - Matthew Milam
It's the same thing when you watch a movie based on a true story, some of the facts are going to be changed. The only different is that the "media" shouldn't be reporting make-believe or half-assed reports. But to a certain extent, reporters don't really care anymore and are tired of fighting the cause.
Now it's up to regular readers to find the truth for themsleves.
12 - Phillip Winn
I'm amazed at how many people are basically saying, "I don't care if the media completely makes stuff up."
I'm starting to wonder, is there really a war on? Was there even really a tsunami? Maybe there haven't really been any new Supreme Court justices in the last year, just a few folks the media wanted to put on TV screens.
That's crazy, folks. We depend on media sources to report the truth, and to own up to it when they get it wrong. People lose their jobs over this kind of thing, generally.
13 - Diane Kristine
I think some of the blase attitude comes from the fact that it's not a new discovery, that the media sometimes reports innuendo as fact and distorts molehills into mountains. Add to that the fact that the tsunami baby story wasn't a hard news story (and one I don't remember hearing about the first time around), with no effect on our lives whether it's true or not (unlike stories about our governments, for example), and you've got jaded and disinterested. Sad, but not unexpected.
14 - Aaman
Perhaps the attitude is because it happened 'over there'
15 - Suzie
Well I agree with the writer..
People should get facts straight... when my niece was murdered by her father in 1997... the newspapers here stated that he had killed my sisters son...
They even said they would type an apology and never did... think of the families who are involved before you start saying who cares..we had family calling us asking if both my sisters children had been murdered..and yes media causes unnecessary trouble in a time of need..
SO, If you don't care, don't read it..
don't leave a comment.. and have some compassion for the people whos lives are effected by lies and untruths..
16 - StillHere2550
It may help to consider the initial circumstances facing the reporters. The people of the island of Sri Lanka were enduring true horror and chaos; it was hot, muggy, and rumours were flying.
The false story of many women seeking one living child struck a chord with people around the world, because the story dramatized the true circumstances that were going on for tens of thousands of people who survived: extreme grief, shock, confusion, unreliable information about missing loved ones,and desperate hope of being reunited.
Since many survived by running or climbing trees, a disproportionate number of the dead were weak people: babies, young children, and the elderly. Hence the story of one small child survivor lighting up hopes for many adults who were missing a child was believable.
Even if reporters had tried to dig into the real facts they likely faced a cultural obstacle. The majority people's (the Singhalese) culture views it as generally inappropriate and risky to correct another person's wrong ideas (lest you embarrass yourself or the other person). Also I've noticed that they rarely volunteer any information to outsiders; they pass along facts hesitantly, when absolutely necessary. A reporter who didn't know the culture could easily make mistakes that he wouldn't make in his home country.
And why not make a lot of effort to correct the story? Perhaps because it would suggest that the true losses, confusion, grief, hope and pain that the story gave voice to had also been false.
17 - SL
...Is the mother's name Juanita or Jenita like I'm seeing on other sites. Funny, this Morguendi who apparently knows the whole truth and nothing but the truth seemed to slip and put a half-assed Mexican name in an Indian culture...
I'd like to see her signature please.
I can't care too much when I know I'll never see the truth
18 - Jaebird
lol