The Long Crawl-back Part IV: After my father lied to their readers, The Guardian publishes a re-write with a groveling editor's note

Via veteran reporter Ben Kaufman's media column in the June 8, 2016 Cincinnati CityBeat, the Queen City's longtime newsweekly:

A recent Cincinnati Enquirer story went global, aided and abetted by the Associated Press. It was perfect click bait. The story said that at 96, Cincinnatian Henry Heimlich used his Maneuver for the first time to save a life (of a purported choking victim, 87-year-old Patty Ris, at the Deupree House senior residence*).

...After Peter Heimlich alerted The Enquirer and others to a similar claim (his father had made) years ago, the paper backed away from the novelty. It assigned a second reporter to redo the story, adding and explaining doubts about the “first” in the longest crawl-back I can remember.

Peter Heimlich told me that in addition to The Enquirer and AP, “these are some of the news outlets I filed corrections requests with last week: CNN, NBC News, The New York Daily News, and WCPO-TV. At this writing, none have corrected the errors.”

This is the fourth part of a series about my corrections requests.

* Reporters at McKnight's and Slate have questioned the veracity of the Deupree House story. So have I.

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After I informed Guardian reporter Joanna Walters in a June 16, 2016 corrections request that she'd been punk'd by 96-year-old father, her paper published a June 28, 2016 re-write of her May 27 article with a new headline, a new lead, and this:

Last Monday [May 23, 2016] the retired chest surgeon encountered a female resident at his retirement home in Cincinnati who was choking at the dinner table.

Without hesitation, Heimlich spun her around in her chair so he could get behind her and administered several upward thrusts with a fist below the chest until the piece of meat she was choking on popped out of her throat and she could breathe again.

...“That moment was very important to me. I knew about all the lives my manoeuvre has saved over the years and I have demonstrated it so many times but here, for the first time, was someone sitting right next to me who was about to die.”

After initial reports emerged of Heimlich and his son Philip declaring this was the first time the retired surgeon had used his technique to treat someone who was choking, an account emerged of an earlier incident.

A 2003 BBC Online report quoted Heimlich talking about using the manoeuvre on a choking diner in a restaurant in 2000. Reports also appeared in the New Yorker and the Chicago Sun-Times. Interviewed again on Friday afternoon by the Guardian, the 96-year-old Heimlich said he did not recall such an incident. His son Philip also stated that he had no knowledge of his father using the technique in any prior emergency.

This is appended at the end of the re-write:

My father lied to their readers and the Guardian covers for him?

In any event, here are the other fixes.

Via the Wayback Machine's cached version of the original article:

Via the current version:

Then there's this tidbit which I tagged in my June 14 item, Mystery meat at the Deupree House -- and is my father dating the "ostensible choking victim"?

Based on my experience, plenty of good beat reporters and editors would have caught that contradiction and would try to fact-check it, so I sent the information to Joanna Walters and Guardian editor David Taylor.

The "bone in the hamburger" puzzlement is still in the current version, so presumably the Guardian gave my father -- who has been widely exposed as a charlatan and a serial liar -- the benefit of the doubt.

Since January, a choking death and three near-fatal choking incidents apparently occurred at a small nursing home in Wales -- company executives aren't answering my questions, so I've asked oversight agencies to investigate

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In the course of researching a story about a choking rescue device called the LifeVac, I stumbled upon what appears to be a troubling situation at a nursing home in a small town in the south of Wales.

According to media reports, press releases, and a Facebook post last week, in less than eight months, a resident of the home choked to death and there have been three near-fatal choking incidents involving two elderly residents, the most recent of which is said to have occurred last week.

It's unclear why this spate of fatal and near-fatal episodes apparently occurred at the facility, so today I asked government agencies to investigate.

Details are murky, but according to various information sources including a Long Island, NY, newspaper, an unidentified resident choked to death this past January at the Allt-Y-Mynydd Care Home in Llanybydder, which has beds for 44 or fewer residents.

According to a UK newspaper, in late May the facility purchased a LifeVac and just days later, a registered nurse who works for the nursing home used the device to save the life of an elderly woman.

According to a LifeVac press release, days later the same elderly resident again nearly choked to death, requiring a hospitalization.

And last week, according to Help Save Lives, a London medical and training supplies company that sold the LifeVac to Allt-Y-Mynydd, yet another near-fatal choking occurred:

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In order to learn more about why so many life-threatening incidents have happened within such a short time, in recent months I've made best efforts to obtain more information from Judy Fawke, manager of the facility...

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...and from Nigel Denny, Managing Director of Ashberry Healthcare of Oxfordshire, England, Allt-Y-Mynydd's parent corporation.

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In response to multiple inquiries requesting non-confidential information about the choking incidents, neither has responded to my questions, so today I asked three government agencies to investigate.

I'll report the results in a future item.

  

The Long Crawl-back Part III: NBC reporter Elizabeth Chuck wouldn't correct factual errors in her story, so I took it to the president of NBC News and...

Via veteran reporter Ben Kaufman's media column in the June 8, 2016 Cincinnati CityBeat, the Queen City's longtime newsweekly:

A recent Cincinnati Enquirer story went global, aided and abetted by the Associated Press. It was perfect click bait. The story said that at 96, Cincinnatian Henry Heimlich used his Maneuver for the first time to save a life (of a purported choking victim, 87-year-old Patty Ris, at the Deupree House senior residence).

...After Peter Heimlich alerted The Enquirer and others to a similar claim (his father had made) years ago, the paper backed away from the novelty. It assigned a second reporter to redo the story, adding and explaining doubts about the “first” in the longest crawl-back I can remember.

Peter Heimlich told me that in addition to The Enquirer and AP, “these are some of the news outlets I filed corrections requests with last week: CNN, NBC News, The New York Daily News, and WCPO-TV. At this writing, none have corrected the errors.”

This is the third part of a series about my corrections requests regarding the lie my father told reporters.

#####

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Here's a screenshot of factual errors in the headline and lead of a May 27, 2016 NBC News story by reporter Elizabeth Chuck:

I contacted Ms. Chuck on May 31 to fact-check some information in her story. The next day I submitted a thoroughly-documented corrections request proving that this was not the first time my father claimed he'd rescued a choking victim with his namesake maneuver.

I also explained that the story she reported had originated at the Cincinnati Enquirer and that hours after receiving my corrections request, the paper published a significant rewrite.

She then invited me to have a phone call with her. I wasn't sure what she needed from me, so I asked and she replied:

I’m trying to figure out whether it’s worth doing an entire separate story on your father, not just an amendment to the original story, and I’d love to hear from you more about whether he has a history of making claims that have later been disproven or are unproven.

Based on your blog, it seems the answer to that is yes.

I'm always interested in moving forward newsworthy stories, so I agreed and informed her that in addition to other examples of my father's career history of making false claims, reporters at McKnight's and Slate had questioned the veracity of the story she reported.

Ms. Chuck phoned me on Saturday June 11 and in a lengthy late afternoon phone call, I provided her with other examples of my father's history of fraud, including his lie claiming to have invented a surgical procedure to replace a damaged esophagus which he called "the Heimlich operation" and claimed was "the world's first total organ replacement."

I also provided her with newsworthy information about other unreported or under-reported stories about the history of the Heimlich maneuver including my father's sordid attempts to harass and damage the careers of other physicians simply because they disagreed with him.

Weeks went by and I didn't hear from her again, so I assumed she'd dropped the idea of reporting a story. I've had my time wasted by other reporters and I don't take it personally.

But she still hadn't corrected the errors in her story, so on July 2, 15, and 18, I sent her courteous e-mails requesting the status of my original request.

I received her confirmations of receipt to all of my e-mails, but no further response so I took it to Erika Masonhall in the communications department.

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I sent Ms. Masonhall two cordial inquiries and received confirmations of receipt, but no further response I took it upstairs to the office of NBC News president Deborah Turness.

Today the headline to Ms. Chuck's May 27 story was changed and a correction appended:

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Yes, my family's name is misspelled.

No, I'm not going to file another corrections request.