The recent Manti Te’o documentary on Netflix is an engaging bit of nostalgia and intrigue for sports fans who remember the story of a star linebacker’s dead girlfriend that ended up being a hoax. The documentary focuses on the dynamic between Manti Te’o and Ronaiah Tuiasosopo who posed as “Lennay Kekua” Te’o’s supposed girlfriend.
Tuiasosopo now identifies as trans and claims to have created the fake female social media profile to explore his desire to be a woman. The two-part docuseries on Netflix glosses over a larger narrative within the story.
It wasn’t just Te’o who was fooled, but the entire country. More importantly, the mainstream media ran with the story of Te’o’s dead girlfriend without ever bothering to verify that she existed.
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At the beginning of Te’o’s senior year in South Bend, it was reported that his grandmother and girlfriend had died on the same day. Media outlets around the country gushed over Te’o as he dedicated his season to his lost loved ones while leading the Fighting Irish to a 12-0 season and a national championship berth.
Not until early 2013, after the championship game, did the public realize the feel-good story was a complete hoax. But why did it take that long? The documentary displays the endless stream of mainstream media outlets that presented the story as fact.
The hoax was revealed by an at the time little-known sports media company, Deadspin, which investigated the story thanks to an anonymous tip. Deadspin didn’t have to dig too deep to discover the hoax, many of the relevant facts were easily verifiable.
“Lennay Kekua” the supposed girlfriend had been in a serious car accident and then died due to a battle with leukemia. Of course, no media outlets had bothered to look for a report of a car accident involving someone of that name or an obituary for “Lennay Kekua.”
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Mainstream media outlets were too enthralled with the story of Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend to confirm her existence. The narrative made for click worthy content and increased ratings, so why ruin a good story with the truth?
This is nothing new, the mainstream media runs with fake stories all the time. Kyle Rittenhouse was defamed as a murderous white supremacist by the mainstream press in 2020. Claims that flew in the face of video that showed Rittenhouse defending himself against three attackers, all of whom were white.
Similarly, Nicholas Sandman was called a racist for “smirking” at a Native American man at a 2019 march in Washington DC. Later evidence revealed Sandman and his Covington Catholic classmates had themselves been the recipients of verbal abuse. These are just two examples of hoaxes presented as fact by the media we are expected to blindly trust.
On its surface the Manti Te’o story is a tale of a proud football star suffering a fall from grace due to naivety and the deceptive actions of an internet stranger struggling. Underneath the surface is a broader narrative that Americans have become accustomed to. A congregation of media entities all running with the same story without ever worrying about the truth behind it.
Perhaps if we as a country had learned to disregard these corporate media outlets back in 2012 we could’ve avoided the downward spiral our country seems to have been on for the past decade.
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