Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2020 November 28

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November 28

Britney Spears' REAL Birthplace

I was a teen/pre-teen when baby one more time came out and I SPECIFICALLY remember COUNTLESS of magazine articles, books, merch, video interviews etc stating NOTHING about Britney Spears being born in McComb Mississippi !? Growing up in real time, it's always been understood that she was born in KENTWOOD and NOT McComb. If I'm right, her birthplace should be changed BACK to Kentwood, Louisiana.

Resource- CNN.com Britney Spears, 38, was born in Kentwood, Louisiana, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eulalia Lynn (talk • contribs) 04:45, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

@Eulalia Lynn: this isn't the right place to deal with article content issues. Try Talk:Britney Spears. But speaking generally, it doesn't really matter what what you "always been understood". What matter is what reliable sources say. If earlier reliable sources said something else both can be noted in the article. But if it's now accepted by reliable sources that those sources were simply wrong, the main info in the lead and infobox would be the new info with the other stuff in a footnote or somewhere in the article body. I'd also note that it's hardly uncommon for someone to be born somewhere different from where they grew up, especially if the latter has a population of ~2000 and there are other cities with other hospitals etc nearby. (I'm lazy to check the distance between the two, but they're evidently close enough that Spears went to school in McComb I think while still living in Kentwood [1].) People also often don't bother to talk about precisely where they born in video interviews etc. Nil Einne (talk) 10:32, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

One cannot really talk about what a source "specifically" did NOT say. It's only when they mention something solely in order to deny it, or indeed to confirm it, that specificity arises. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:11, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Your best bet would be to track down a local newspaper from December 1981 or January 1982 and see if there's a birth announcement. Most likely it would name one or both parents, but possibly not the name of the newborn, just "baby girl" or whatever. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:13, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Note that Kentwood and McComb are only 21 miles apart [2] despite being in different states. Alansplodge (talk) 15:32, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Possibly due to inappropriate assumptions by the writers of older sources. If you know that someone is from Town X and has lived in Town X all their life, it is easy to assume that they were born in Town X. This does not necessarily hold up to scrutiny though. Especially with small, rural towns in the Deep South. Doing a search for "hospitals near Kentwood, Louisiana" shows none in the town itself. The hospital in McComb is currently the fourth closest one (the closer ones may not have existed in 1981). --Khajidha (talk) 11:53, 30 November 2020 (UTC)