On Tuesday, December 10, the Guardian ran an article about a lock down at the Fayette County Memorial Hospital.
According to numerous people, the article from the Guardian was false. These comments by people were prompted after the local police department contacted one of the Guardian’s competitors, the Record Herald, “to dispel social media rumors that there was an active shooter threat at the local hospital.” Because the Guardian was the first to break the story, most people who knew about the lock down only knew about it from the Guardian.
After the Record Herald posted on social media saying there was not an active shooter threat, this caused numerous people to take to social media and bash the Guardian’s article, labeling it “fake news.” So much so, that Scioto Post — which was the brainchild of me and Jon Hogue, might I add — flat out called the article a lie: “A online blogger has gone off again saying rumors on the internet are true,” Jeremy Newman wrote. (If I’m a “blogger,” then what is he, since I co-created his product and he only has the position because of a vacancy left by me?)
I went back and read the article the Guardian published about the hospital word-for-word, line-by-line; we stand by the reporting, with the exception that the “headline” could have read more clear to match the body of the article; we have fixed the headline and made note of it in the story.
The Guardian’s story never said there was a shooting threat. The story did say, however, there was a lock down. The story did cite the hospital confirming the lock down, and the story did go on to cite employees and their spouses, who are the ones who said it was a shooting threat.
The issue is not with the story that was published by the Guardian; the issue would be with the employees and their spouses who said that the lock down was caused from a “shooting threat.”
The article cited personal eyewitnesses and their accounts, who were inside the building when the lock down occurred. It is no different than if Channel 10 news spoke to people inside of a building during an actual mass shooting; these were eyewitnesses and these were their accounts of the events.
The hospital went on a lock down: FACT.
Employees inside the hospital during the lock down said it was a shooting threat: FACT.
The Guardian never said there was an active shooter threat. We did, however, cite the employees who gave their eyewitness accounts. We stand by our reporting.
