Heartbreaking Santa story may be fake and all the signs were there

It was the Santa story heard round the internet.

Eric Schmitt-Matzen told columnist Sam Venable at the Knoxville News Sentinel that he had nearly given up playing Santa – a role he said he filled about 80 times a year – after a nurse recently called him to a hospital in East Tennessee, saying a dying 5-year-old wanted to see him.

Schmitt-Matzen told Venable he got to the hospital in 15 minutes, just in time to give the child a toy, tell him he was his No. 1 elf and hug the child as he died.

“I was a basket case for three days. It took me a week or two to stop thinking about it all the time,” Schmitt-Matzen said. “Actually, I thought I might crack up and never be able to play the part again.”

The emotional story was published by McClatchy and many other local, national and international news outlets. Many attributed the story to the News Sentinel, while others interviewed Schmitt-Matzen directly. His story was consistent, drawing tears from the 60-year-old man as he told it. The Huffington Post said the story “proves Santa exists,” and CNN said while it isn’t a typical Christmas story, “we’re certainly glad it was told.”

Now, the News Sentinel says it is “no longer standing by the veracity of Schmitt-Matzen’s account.”

“The News Sentinel cannot establish that Schmitt-Matzen’s account is inaccurate, but more importantly, ongoing reporting cannot establish that it is accurate,” the staff story said. An editor’s note has also been added to the original account, saying “Although facts about his background have checked out, his story of bringing a gift to a dying child remains unverified.”

The story's gaps were first pointed out by Snopes. Requests for comment from this outlet to both Venable and News Sentinel Editor Jack McElroy – the two who authored the piece saying the story could not be verified – were not returned.

Given the epidemic of fake news that came under scrutiny during the election, Santa’s story is a good lesson to news outlets and consumers alike.

“One thing that pinged my radar is the story kept being shared, and it all pointed back to Sam, which is just one source,” Snopes reporter Arturo Garcia said in an interview. “The more it’s shared, the more you wonder if people are paying attention.”

Schmitt-Matzen has reportedly declined to provide certain details about his tale, making it difficult for anyone to confirm it. That should have been a red flag from the beginning, Garcia said, but it apparently wasn’t. The News Sentinel follow-up saying they could not verify the piece only mentioned an investigation being undertaken after the story was published.

“Venable told us on 13 December 2016 that Schmitt-Matzen has refused to identify the family, the hospital or the nurse involved in the story in follow-up interviews,” Garcia wrote. “However, Schmitt-Matzen did backtrack from his initial claim that he reached the facility in 15 minutes, saying instead that it was in East Tennessee.”

Garcia said in an interview that he first started thinking the story was unusual due to hospital protocols, since hospital security and concerns about privacy are typically pretty tight. Calling around to several Knoxville hospitals, two told Garcia the incident did not occur at their facilities.

“It is unclear whether a scenario like the one Schmitt-Matzen described constitutes privacy violations for the patient and his family under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996,” Garcia wrote, adding he has requested comment from institutions that can provide more information on that issue.

Venable told Garcia earlier this week that the News Sentinel was looking into confirming the story, though soon after that the News Sentinel published a second piece on reactions to the story, without raising questions about its accuracy at the time.

“Certainly, if we are in error on this, we want to be the very first to come out and say — if there is an error — it’s on us,” Venable told Garcia earlier this week.

Schmitt-Matzen did not return a request for comment, either to Garcia or to this outlet. He has posted the story on his personal Facebook page, where it was been shared nearly 6,000 times and liked more than 12,000 times.

Garcia ruled the Santa story “unproven,” and said he hopes some news outlets take this as a lesson to give reporters time to vet their information.

“In this way, this particular Santa tale serves an instructive purpose: it shows how an unvetted story can spread regardless of how true it might be, with each news outlet repeating it making it seem that much closer to the truth until it is, at last, uncritically reported as fact,” Garcia wrote.

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 2:31 PM with the headline "Heartbreaking Santa story may be fake and all the signs were there."