Sportswriter repeats the same old claptrap and innuendo about Tuam.
The Irish Times claims to be the best and most accurate source of news in Ireland, a paper of record. However, in a desperate attempt to boost declining sales, it has, in recent times, adopted the tactics of the gutter press. It appears that reporting truthfully, using skilful and informed journalists, is now considered by newspaper owners to be the quickest route to oblivion.
Forcing journalists to write false stories or to sex-up mundane content with excitable or smutty innuendo would appear to be the preferred methods used by the main body of the gutter press. However, other, more subtle methods can be used to similar effect. One tactic is to use journalists who have little or no expertise in a specific area of interest. It’s a brilliant tactic that takes advantage of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It holds that people, with no competence regarding a particular subject, feel themselves to be experts in that subject. I know, it’s gas! When applied to journalism, reporters don’t know what the most pertinent questions are to ask. Consequently, they have little or no skill in getting to the truth of the matter. So how does an editor manage to achieve that?
Imagine if you took a sports journalist, a person whose entire career involves describing the behaviour of grown adults chasing a bag full of wind around a field, and then send them to cover a story that requires an elementary knowledge of science and medicine. The result would be a story written from the perspective of a sportswriter. Moreover, the lack of pertinent knowledge would leave the reporter in a position of gullibility. To be taken advantage of, without knowing or even suspecting it.
Poor auld Keith Duggan, taken advantage of by the Gutter Times, with no clue what just happened!
- There are not 796 children buried at the children’s graveyard. The number arises from the work of an official at the registrar’s office in Galway. It’s a mistake, as the official missed out on some of the records.
- Catherine Corless is not a historian!
- She omitted the fact that out of the 796 death certificates she obtained, nearly 100 were of children born to married parents.
- The burial ground indicated on a map of the Tuam Children’s Home is much larger than the current boundaries of the burial ground.
- Astonishingly, the Irish branch of the Red Cross is not impartial! Yep, it gave an award to Catherine Corless, without checking the veracity of her claims.
- Children were not abused nor starved to death at Tuam or any other so-called mother and baby home.
EJ
You can read the claptrap and innuendo here
