Deadspin video/assignment editor Timothy Burke visited UT last week to speak with journalism students about his unraveling of the Manti Te’o hoax. Through teamwork and technology, Burke discovered what is being called one of the biggest sports scandals our generation has ever seen.
“Living in a time, an era, where we are saturated by access to the Internet is what enabled us to be able to do this story,” Burke said.
Burke completed the five-day investigation and co-wrote the story with Jack Dickey, a senior English major at Columbia University.
“It was like putting together one big puzzle, slowly and piece by piece,” Burke said.
Burke and Dickey began their investigation the way any other journalist would: They asked questions. Using a Google Doc, Burke and Dickey answered a series of questions they felt were most pertinent, in part through Google and LexisNexis searches establishing what other news outlets had published. When multiple outlets led them in different directions, Burke knew they had a story.
“Four different publications had four different dates of death for [Lennay Kekua],” Burke said. “That was a red flag.”
They first found conflicting information for Kekua’s age, date of death, funeral location and the time lapse between her own death and the death of Te’o’s maternal grandmother. Burke subsequently carried out a simple Social Security public records search to find a confirmed date of death for Kekua. Her name brought up no results, meaning one of two things: Kekua hadn’t died, or she never even existed.
“It was like chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole,” Burke said. “Only, we knew the hole existed. We just weren’t sure about the rabbit.”
After conducting a series of Google Image reverse searches, and sifting through old and deleted tweets, Burke and Dickey found the final puzzle piece to Kekua’s real identity. A photo that had been tweeted from Kekua’s account matched the profile picture from a Myspace account belonging to a woman whose profile name was Diane.
Burke would later find out her full name was Diane O’Meara. Burke contactewd O’Meara and explained to her that he thought her identity had been stolen. Burke then sent the pictures that were supposedly of Kekua. O’Meara confirmed they were all pictures she had taken of herself.
The most recent picture used to portray Kekua was about a month old and O’Meara had only sent it to one person. An old friend from high school, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, had asked her for the picture so he could send it for moral support to a cousin who was about to go through major brain surgery.
She subsequently sent him multiple pictures, including one of her holding a sign that said “good luck on the 7th,” the supposed date of Tuiasosopo’s cousin’s surgery. January 7th was the date of the BCS National Championship football game between the University of Notre Dame and the University of Alabama.
At the same time Burke contacted O’Meara, Dickey uncovered three tweets from users saying they knew who was behind Lennay Kekua. All three tweets sported the hashtag #ronaiah.
Burke and Dickey had access to a phone number for Tuiasosopo. He has yet to return their calls.
“That’s one of the frustrations in this job,” Burke said. “In doing an investigation, you are trying to find information that somebody doesn’t want you to know.”
A little more digging led to more tweets from users who claimed they thought Te’o’s relationship was a hoax. Not long after, Burke and Dickey received another email from someone claiming to be Tuiasosopo’s cousin. The email stated that while he knew that his family would not approve of him sharing this information, he didn’t want Ronaiah to hurt anyone else.
“He gave us everything,” Burke said, “the whole story.”
The final question Burke needed to answer was where Te’o fell in all of this. It is a question that still remains unanswered today.
As Burke said, “We had to ask the people that we knew, ‘Did Manti Te’o know about this? How much did he know? When did he know?’ And they were skeptical as to how [Te’o] could have fallen for this for so long.”
On the morning the Deadspin article went live, Burke made a series of phone calls in hopes of getting a statement from Te’o or someone connected with Te’o on where Te’o stood with this hoax. The number they had for Te’o was not accepting calls. They called Te’o’s father, but he was in a meeting. They called the Notre Dame football press office and got hold of a secretary. Burke explained who he was and who he worked for. He said Deadspin was about to publish a major story about Te’o and they had evidence Te’o’s dead girlfriend never existed. Burke asked to speak with the football press officer. The secretary said the press officer would get back to them if he found it important.
“We waited an hour,” Burke said. “He didn’t get back to us. We published.”
Since its publication, the Deadspin story has received more than 4 million hits. It boasted more than 1 million hits the day it premiered.
Burke said the story’s ultimate success stemmed from basic journalistic instincts: asking questions.
“I have no idea how different media outlets didn’t pick up on it,” he said. “People don’t like to question death.”
At the end of his talk, which he delivered at the invitation of assistant journalism professor Daniel Reimold, Burke left the students with one piece of reporting advice.
“Be a critical listener,” he said, “Don’t accept everything as fact, but learn to ask why.”
Chelsea Daubar can be reached at chelsea.daubar@theminaretonline.com