How the media failed Nex Benedict

A candle light vigil if held for Nex Benedict in Washington, D.C. on February 22, 2024 (Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

On February 21, 2024, the Owasso Police Department issued a statement on Nex Benedict, the non-binary Oklahoma high school student who was assaulted in a school bathroom and died the following day. It included this passage on the cause of Nex's death:

While the investigation continues into the altercation, preliminary information from the medical examiner’s office is that a complete autopsy was performed and indicated that the decedent did not die as a result of trauma.

The same day, the Associated Press (AP), whose articles are republished in hundreds of media outlets across the country, published an article: "Oklahoma police say nonbinary teen’s death was not result of injuries from high school fight." The claim was repeated several times in the body of the article. 

That, however, is not what the Owasso Police statement said. The Owasso Police said that the medical examiner had preliminarily "indicated" that Nex's death was not due to "trauma." The word "trauma" does not appear in the AP's report. 

On February 22, Popular Information contacted a spokesperson for the Owasso Police, Lieutenant Nick Boatman, to get more clarity on the statement. In a piece published the next day, Popular Information quoted Boatman acknowledging the medical examiner never said Nex "did not die from something as a result of that fight." Boatman also said that murder charges against the students who assaulted Nex were still "on the table." According to Boatman, the information was not shared in advance with Nex's family because the medical examiner might "wait until the cause of death is actually determined before they do that." Boatman admitted that the statement was released prior to the determination of a cause of death to "head off some of this national scrutiny."

NBC News confirmed Popular Information's reporting on February 27. "Authorities haven’t ruled out that a fight at school could have contributed to the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old transgender student whose case has drawn international media attention," NBC News reported. Boatman told NBC News, "the medical examiner’s office didn’t say it had ruled out the fight as causing or contributing to Benedict’s death and that 'people shouldn’t make assumptions either way.'"

But other media outlets ignored Popular Information's and NBC News' reporting and continued to falsely report that the fight had been ruled out as a cause of death. On February 27, shortly after NBC News' report was published, CBS Evening News reported that "[a] preliminary autopsy report says Nex did not die from injuries in the fight." 

To be clear, the cause of Nex's death has not been determined. It is not known whether or not, when the medical examiner issues a report on Nex's death, it will determine that their death was related to the assault that took place the day before. So why does this matter?

In the aftermath of Nex's death, there has been a renewed discussion about the bullying and harassment of LGBTQ students. In Oklahoma, State Superintendent Ryan Walters has been targeting LGBTQ students with a series of discriminatory policies. “We’re not going to tolerate the woke Olympics in our schools, left-wing ideologues trying to push in this radical gender theory,” Walters said in January. “It is the most radical concept we’ve ever come across in K-12 education, that you can be gender fluid (or) change your gender constantly.”

The New York Times reported that "gay and transgender advocates accused… Walters of having fomented an atmosphere of dangerous intolerance within public schools." In an interview, Walters relied on the inaccurate reporting in the media to tamp down this criticism. "We’ve been told [the] death wasn’t directly related to the fight at school," Walters told the New York Times. "I think it’s terrible that we’ve had some radical leftists who decided to run with a political agenda and try to weave a narrative that hasn’t been true." 

The same tactic has been used by Chaya Raichik, an anti-LGBTQ extremist and operator of the notorious LibsofTikTok account, who Walters appointed to a state advisory board. Raichik used a false characterization of the police statement in local media to claim critics had defamed her.

Several days after the Owasso Police clarified its statement, neither the AP nor CBS News have corrected their reporting. The AP and CBS News did not respond to requests for comment.