True Story Media.

Please note that this show discusses child abuse, which may be difficult for some listeners.

For resources about abusive head trauma, go to shakenbaby.org.

I want a better future for children and for their families.

And part of my dismay about the many media stories centering the medical kidnapping narrative

is that I know enough to see exactly how this type of advocacy is moving us further away from just that.

I will always be thorough in my reporting.

I'll always do my very best to be fair, but I will never be neutral. I'm here because I know the

stakes and because I believe that stories can move us in a way that statistics and data,

as valuable as those things are, will never do. We know the power of a story.

When I talk about vaccines, I've talked for years, I've given lots of keynote talks on how

you address vaccine hesitancy and how you counter it.

And the way you counter it is stories.

I'm a big believer in the anecdotal lead and the, you know, because that's what people understand.

And it's stories resonate in an emotional way with us. So if you want to actually convey

something that happened and, and help it connect with them in that logos, pathos, ethos way

of getting the pathos, you've got to tell a story.

And in this case, I needed a story that matched the kinds of stories that you hear where it's not

true, right? It's the seemingly nice middle-class family.

When Tara Haley was writing her piece on abusive head trauma, she knew she had the facts on her side, the scientific consensus, the peer-reviewed research, and the data.

But she also knew that leading with that would be bringing a knife to a gunfight.

She knew she needed to talk to someone who'd been there.

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