Last month, there circulated a viral news story from the Knoxville News Sentinel about a Santa Claus actor who was called to a hospital so he could play Santa for a dying child. The boy died in the Santa’s arms, and the story was just heartbreaking. It was also untrue. The story was told to the paper, which then reached out to the Santa actor, who confirmed the details. Later, however, the finer points of the story could not be verified. The story couldn’t be proven to be true, but it couldn’t be disproven as untrue, either. Since it failed to meet the News Sentinel’s own standards for veracity, it pulled the story and issued an explanation as to what happened.
