Britney Spears Keeping Pregnancy “Under Wraps”?

(Getty Images)

One year ago today, a website insisted Britney Spears was three months pregnant and keeping the baby news “under wraps.” At the time, Gossip Cop reported it was 100 percent untrue. Now 12 months later, it’s clear we were right and that the outlet which swore up and down she was expecting her third child couldn’t have been more wrong.

On April 28, 2018, a blog called Naughty Gossip exclaimed in a headline, “Britney Spears Is Pregnant.” The often discredited outlet, picking up its information from another site called Blind Gossip, noted then that Spears wouldn’t be able to “keep her secret under wraps for much longer.” Also included in the article was speculation about how Spears would be able to continue performing with a “baby belly.”

The story shared how the singer has a “steady partner,” so there was no need to guess who the baby daddy was. Still, it bizarrely neglected to mention that her boyfriend’s name is Sam Asghari. Continuing to disregard some basic rules of journalism, such as investigating other outlet’s claims before republishing them, Naughty Gossip simply took Blind Gossip’s questionable article, which had no proof whatsoever, and presented it as fact.

Well, as Gossip Cop stated out after speaking to a mutual friend of ours and the singer, Spears was not pregnant and hiding a baby bump. A full 365 days have passed and obviously the singer didn’t have another child. It bears pointing out how neither of those blogs that breathlessly maintained she was expecting again apologized for their false reports, nor have they bothered (to this day) to update their incorrect stories to reflect Spears was not actually pregnant.

Just two months before those works of fiction, Gossip Cop busted Us Weekly when it similarly alleged inaccurately that Spears was having a baby with Asghari. We also nailed Heat last August when it mistakenly contended Spears was getting pregnant and having a baby after her “Piece of Me” tour ended. In each of those cases, the various tabloids and websites relied on bad information or unreliable sources. Conversely, Gossip Cop’s reporting was spot-on because our Spears insiders are impeccable.

And that brings us to why Gossip Cop looks back from time to time at claims from the year before, like the one about Spears supposedly keeping a pregnancy “under wraps.” We revisit these reports because far too many media organizations that publish these types of falsehoods simply move on and don’t take any responsibility for having fed the public lies, which tend to spread across the web’s echo chamber. (Admittedly, even we flub on occasion, but at least we update our stories or add corrections.) The lesson is the next time an outlet asserts Spears is pregnant, check to see how it has fared before with its articles about the singer, and then still come to Gossip Cop to make sure you get the truth.