That's because these women never existed.
But wait! What about that photograph of three women wailing and demanding the baby?
Are they demanding the baby? Yes.
Are there three of them? Yes.
Who are they? They're Juanita, her mother, and her aunt.
So in reality it's three women from the same family demanding their baby. The mother and the aunt wanted the baby back as badly as Juanita did. But what did the caption on the photograph read? "Three mothers claim Baby 81 as their own,” or something to that effect.
The truth actually came out a year ago with a report in the Lanka Business Online. It's been lightly reported. An article in the Rocky Mountain News is a rare exception. Blogs like Outside the Beltway and the Volokh Conspiracy reported the hoax but the mainstream media had mostly moved on.
Here's a challenge: Go through all of the Baby 81 stories available online and find the name of one woman (other than Juanita Jeyaraj) who claimed the baby. A lot of news stories carry quotes from other women, but Juanita says that these things were said by her mother or her aunt, who were with her all along during the ordeal. No one bothered to identify who they were.
And now, why has there been no retraction or apology from anyone?
Do all of the news wire services know it was a lie? Yes.
Does everyone in the media know it was a lie? Yes.
But no one is going to say anything about it because many in the media were a part of this lie. Everyone – from the reporters in Sri Lanka who rushed to Kalmunai to cover the story to the editors sitting at their desks in London and New York – messed up.
No one checked their sources, and the story was covered simply because everyone else was covering it. And now, all are party to the crime yet you sure as hell won’t see the media owning up to its mistakes unless absolutely forced.
Morquendi is a contributor to Desicritics.org, a Blogcritics.org network site.
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