|
?:reviewBody
|
-
On 17 January 2017, the Willamette Week reported a heartbreaking story: as the temperature there dipped below freezing, a homeless woman was discovered at a bus stop barefoot, clad in tattered clothes, and holding a dead baby: This report is true, and was filed by a legitimate news organization. However, a photograph that was quickly attached to the already-shocking story in order to make it into a meme is not related to the incident: The meme about the woman and her baby also spread the claim that the baby froze to death and did not die from a cause unrelated to the cold, which has been debated. First responders had previously reported that the child was alive when it was found, but the state's medical examiner said that the infant was actually stillborn: There are many factors to this story, none less tragic than any other — the fact that many people on the streets of Portland, Oregon (as in many parts of the United States) suffer from untreated mental illness; that this 9 January 2017 death was not the first of the year from possible exposure in the local homeless population, nor even the second, but the fifth; or that the mother of the dead baby is now nowhere to be found. However, this particular meme not only oversimplifies the issue, but uses a misleading photograph in order to do so.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}