Reports that Beyoncé had given birth to twins started to trickle onto Twitter on a Saturday night in mid-June, and from that trickle a flood ensued. Most fans were elated, posting memes and GIFs galore.
Before long, more and more media outlets were reporting the news: People, Entertainment Tonight, CNN. Even The Washington Post published a take, which was, for good reason, the most reserved.
Why? Because no one from Beyoncé’s camp had confirmed the births, and there was nothing from Jay-Z’s team either.All the organizations that were reporting the delivery were citing anonymous sources or relying on the outlets using unnamed sources.
I wrote a piece that night with a “media frenzy” angle, our original peg, similar to the “did she or didn’t she” story The Post published the next day. But I had a niggling feeling in my gut.
At that hour, without the help of our research team, I wasn’t able to obtain the contact information for Beyoncé’s representatives, her talent agency or her publicist. Even if I had roused a culture editor for the information, it would have been highly unlikely for her reps to respond so late at night. It didn’t feel right to move forward, and we decided to put off publishing until the next day.
By the time I arrived at work that Sunday, my colleague had reached out to one of Beyoncé’s reps, but there was no response. Sure, we’d tried, but was that enough to run with?
At The New York Times, obtaining independent confirmation is the standard for all our reporting, births and deaths included. Carefully vetting the reliability of different sources is paramount.
And we relentlessly try to get…The post To Beyoncé or Not to Beyoncé: The Challenges of Confirming the Birth of Her Twins appeared first on FeedBox.