About that pregnancy pact . . . » GetReligion

re: "When Time magazine broke the story about the alleged Gloucester High School pregnancy pact, the entire media world erupted.... /...[snip]... / So it’s interesting that TIME’s follow-up more or less completely backtracks on the story. Not that you’d know it from the headline: // Gloucester Pregnancy Plot Thickens //If by “thickens” they mean “gets watered down” then I’m with them. Reporter Kathleen Kingsbury, whose first story blamed lack of access to contraceptives and the movie Juno for the pregnancy boom, admits the pact allegation came from one source and that the one source isn’t so sure anymore... / ...[snip]... / The schools superintendent says that rather than a pact, some girls who were already pregnant decided to band together to stay in school and raise their children together. The follow-up story does a much better job than the first story of talking about the role that family values or the lack thereof might have played in the situation. Not that anyone will be reading this follow-up story but if they did, they’d hear classmates say the pregnant teens had little parental supervision, were permitted to stay out all night if they wanted and were afflicted by peer pressure. But the reporter reiterates that the school official who used the word pact now says he’s not sure who told him about the pact or when. /Still a very dramatic story, sure, but not quite as dramatic as first reported. Also, the phrase “decided to get pregnant” is a bit odd considering that Time hasn’t confirmed that with any of the girls in question...