Ohio reporters at center of Springfield false claims battle

When Donald Trump made debunked claims at last week's presidential debate that immigrants in the Ohio city of Springfield were eating dogs and cats, Ohio reporters weren't nearly as surprised as the rest of the country. In fact, they were prepared for it.

“That was the big question for us going into the night: Would Trump go there?” said Darrel Rowland, a veteran political reporter at Columbus-based stations WSYX6 and FOX 28. “And yes, he did. The fuse was lit.”

Rowland and his colleagues across the state had already been tracking the troubling rhetoric about the thousands of Haitian migrants who have made Springfield their home in recent years — a move that, at least until recently, was welcomed by businesses and city officials who felt the city of 60,000 was in desperate need of revitalization. In July, JD Vance, now the Republican vice presidential nominee, gave the story a boost when he began spreading claims that hospitals and schools were overwhelmed by an influx of immigrants. On Saturday before the debate, Vance added fuel to the fire when he tweeted unsubstantiated reports that Haitians were kidnapping and eating local pets.

Contrary to earlier rumors, Trump has no plans to campaign in Springfield, according to a source familiar with the former president's travels, but his decision to mention the city in the debate has heightened tensions in the city.

Within a week, at least 33 bomb threats led to the evacuation of buildings, the closure of schools and the cancellation of numerous events across the city.

“This week has been a disaster,” said Jeremy P. Kelley, editor of the Springfield News-Sunwhen it was first reached at the height of last week's excitement. The small newspaper was busy listing all the incoming threats, providing updates on elementary school evacuations, and documenting the local university's plans to switch to online classes.

It was also a big part of the coverage to combat misinformation about the city. Jessica Orozco, a News-Sun Employees, was the first to report – within a half hour of Vance's Saturday post on X – that local police could not find any recent evidence of stolen or eaten pets. Since then, she has written nearly two dozen articles for the paper, including one about how local politicians have responded to the situation by rejecting falsehoods and urging residents to focus on the real challenges posed by the population influx, such as increased competition for housing, school funding and health care.

That Tuesday, Kelley finally had a moment to reflect. “The biggest challenge in covering the story was keeping up with the nearly constant developments for over a week,” Kelley said in an email. “When you're twenty seconds into a press conference on Teams and you learn that City Hall is being evacuated because of the very first bomb threat, you skip the press conference and run down the street to interview the city manager. That doesn't help you plan.”

Once things calm down, Kelley said, he hopes to shift the paper's focus to more in-depth coverage of “the larger, underlying issues of how Haitian immigration is affecting Springfield” – and how the community will recover once the media hype leaves town. In an article published over the weekend, twenty residents were asked about their hopes for the future.

Several Ohio reporters who have covered the story in recent months say they are concerned about the same things: whether the intense media coverage has made things worse for the city — and whether fact-checking efforts have really made a difference in the face of the brazen barrage of falsehoods.

“Especially among the people who tend to support immigrants, nobody wants that attention,” said Jake Zuckerman, a Cleveland.com political reporter who reported from Springfield at the start of the immigration furor. “Nobody asked for it. Nobody said we want to be the focus of a presidential election.”

“This is the first time I feel like I've been exposed to a wave of misinformation,” said Sarah Donaldson, a reporter for Ohio's Statehouse News and state affiliates NPR and PBS, who was in Springfield last weekend.

“It's been a long and challenging week, and I've only been to Springfield once this week,” she said. “So I'm thinking of my fellow reporters who have been there every day, because I think you see a lot of backlash against 'the media,' although of course the media is not a monolith.”

Rowland, the veteran political reporter, said he sometimes wonders: Does our mere presence in this city make things worse? “And part of you leaves with a not so good feeling,” he said. “Because on the one hand you think I want to know the truthand I can tell that people are afraid to be interviewed. They say the national media is not accurately representing your community, but if you don't talk, where else is the story going to come from?”

He continued: “What we're seeing in little Springfield, Ohio, is kind of a microcosm of this whole issue of truth claims, untruth claims and the way we do our jobs as journalists. It's like: What is our responsibility? How loudly do we point out that these are untruths?”

Jake Lahut is a campaign reporter in New York. He covered the 2024 Republican primaries for The Daily Beast and author of the Trail Mix newsletter. Previously he worked at Business Insider and the Keene Guard.