If there is no evidence to support it, does that mean the story didn't happen?

And here is the second lie I came across in just a few minutes of news scanning. From ‘I’m… At A Loss For Words’: The Unraveling Narrative Behind The Atlantic’s Defund-The-Police ‘Shooting’ Tale by Christopher Bedford.

When social justice activist and lawyer Derecka Purnell was just 12 years old, she and her sister watched a police officer shoot a young boy in a city recreation center because he had ignored the basketball sign-in sheet. This jarring, emotional, and deeply unsettling story was published July 6 at The Atlantic, in the section reserved for ideas, under the bold, attention-grabbing headline, “How I Became a Police Abolitionist.”

Purnell’s deeply personal story of shattered innocence and shattered bones at the end of a policeman’s gun was shared widely among top journalists and activists. “I started her article thinking abolition was impossible and ending thinking it must happen,” the president of a social justice think tank at Harvard wrote on Twitter, quoting his mother. “This is a beautifully written piece,” the Atlantic’s constitutional law editor agreed. “Derecka is the future,” an activist journalism executive declared.

There’s a major problem with Purnell’s story, however. Based on a Federalist investigation of newspaper archives and the police department records, and questions to The Atlantic, the police union, and the office of the mayor, it does not appear to have ever happened.

Does Bedford have a slam dunk case that Purnell is lying? No. Not quite airtight. But pretty compelling. The fact that neither The Atlantic appears to be willing to answer questions about the story or address evidence that it is pure fiction is suggestive but also not conclusive.

So right now, all we can do is chalk this up as another Jayson Blair, or Janet Cooke. Will Derecka Purnell enter the pantheon of self-serving journalists who advance their interests at the cost of reportorial accuracy and integrity?

We'll have to wait and see, but it is becoming an increasingly crowded highway to professional perdition. Not underserved but sad to see talent wasted in such a fashion.


UODATE: From Bedford - The Atlantic Finally Admits Its Police Abolition Piece Is Based On A False Narrative. A shooting did occur, not by the police but by a security guard. The victim was 18, not a boy. The victim was also a cousin of the security guard shooter.

Purnell told the story to ground her police abolition in a childhood tragedy which she witnessed. Instead, we find that all that happened was an intra-family dispute leading to a wounding and with no police involvement.