[1] America Magazine and Associated Press (AP) Apologies
I previously wrote about the apology made by the Associated Press (AP) for the world-wide publication in June 2014 of a story that the Church had refused to baptise the children of unmarried mothers at the Tuam Home (see Part [3] ) It was the Jesuit America Magazine that had successfully pressed AP to make their original apology on 20 June 2014 and I see that AP followed up on 23 June with a more detailed statement. AP Expands on Corrections of 'Tuam Babies' Story is an article by Kevin Clarke in "America" on 24 June 2014.
In a report released June 23, the Associated Press expanded on the corrections it issued on June 20 after America asked an AP media representative to respond to apparent inaccuracies in its reporting on the scandal swirling around the disposition of deceased residents of a mothers and babies home in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland between 1925 and 1962.
According to the AP:
Revelations this month that nuns had buried nearly 800 infants and young children in unmarked graves at an Irish orphanage during the last century caused stark headlines and stirred strong emotions and calls for investigation. Since then, however, a more sober picture has emerged that exposes how many of those headlines were wrong.
The case of the Tuam "mother and baby home" offers a study in how exaggeration can multiply in the news media, embellishing occurrences that should have been gripping enough on their own....The reports of unmarked graves shouldn't have come as a surprise to the Irish public, who for decades have known that some of the 10 defunct "mother and baby homes," which chiefly housed the children of unwed mothers, held grave sites filled with forgotten dead.
The religious orders' use of unmarked graves reflected the crippling poverty of the time, the infancy of most of the victims, and the lack of plots in cemeteries corresponding to the children's fractured families.
It added:
When Corless published her findings on a Facebook campaign page, and Irish media noticed, she speculated to reporters that the resting place of most, if not all, could be inside a disused septic tank on the site. By the time Irish and British tabloids went to print in early June, that speculation had become a certainty, the word "disused" had disappeared, and U.S. newspapers picked up the report, inserting more errors, including one that claimed the researcher had found all 796 remains in a septic tank.
The Associated Press was among the media organizations that covered Corless and her findings, repeating incorrect Irish news reports that suggested the babies who died had never been baptized and that Catholic Church teaching guided priests not to baptize the babies of unwed mothers or give to them Christian burials. [my emphasis]
The reports of denial of baptism later were contradicted by the Tuam Archdiocese, which found a registry showing that the home had baptized more than 2,000 babies. The AP issued a corrective story on Friday after discovering its errors.
There was a brief discussion following the America article to which I contributed THIS comment:
Rory Connor 6 years 2 months ago
The following extract from an article in the Sunday Independent by Dr Maurice Gueret, editor of the "Irish Medical Directory" should finally dispose of the "babies bodies in a septic tank" obscenity:
"We Need Less Outrage and More Home Truths about Tuam"
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/we-need-less-outrage-and-more-home-truths-about-tuam-30380889.html [link no longer works]
The sight of politicians calling for declaration of crime scenes and a newspaper arranging radar examination of a graveyard does little to bring clarity to a complicated story. It was no secret that many children died young, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. They were dying all over Ireland from infectious diseases. Principal causes were TB, dysentery, diphtheria, meningitis, bacterial pneumonia, and complications of measles and polio. This was the pre-antibiotic era. You were considered lucky if all your children lived to adulthood. Every year, the Galway Health Board would advertise a public contract in local newspapers for a supply of coffins to its Tuam children's home. They were to be made of white deal, one-inch thick, and supplied in three different sizes. Specifications included electro-brassed grips, breastplate and crucifixes. It was no state secret that orphanages that looked after large numbers of vulnerable children, most under the age of five, had higher death rates than the community at large. [My Emphasis]
When the official tribunal produces its Report in a year or so, I predict that it will ignore the false atrocity stories in favour of a swinging denunciation of our grandparents "repressive" attitudes to unmarried mothers. Thus the journalists responsible for the current libel will feel virtuous and vindicated!
[2] Text of Advertisement for Coffins
Here is what an advertisement in the Tuam Herald said in 1939:
"Tender for coffins for Children's Home, plain and mounted, in three sizes, must be 1" thick, made of seasoned white deal, clean and free from knots and slits, pitched and strained in large, medium, small sizes. Mounting must be similar make, but mounted with Electro Brassed Grips, Breast and Crucifix."
quoted by Bill Donohue , President of The Catholic League in "Ireland's Mass Grave Hysteria"
[3] Original AP Apology dated 20 June 2014
Ireland-Children’s Mass Graves story DUBLIN (AP) — In stories published June 3 and June 8 about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.
I quoted the above in Part [2] of my 3-Part series "The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns" and also in the final part of "Eight Falsely Accused Bishops (and Archbishops) in Ireland" . The people who invented that libel were aiming at the nuns but it would be a Bishop - in this case Archbishop of Tuam - who would make the exceptionally rare decision of this type.(It might conceivably happen, if parents made it clear that they had no intention of bringing up the child as a Catholic).
In their expanded apology on 23 June 2014, AP state that they had repeated "incorrect Irish news reports that suggested the babies who died had never been baptized and that Catholic Church teaching guided priests not to baptize the babies of unwed mothers or give to them Christian burials". I find it difficult to imagine that ANY Irish journalist seriously believed that the Catholic Church refused to baptise the babies of unmarried mothers or denied them Christian burials. Will Judge Yvonne Murphy track down the source of these libels? Did the journalist(s) responsible publish/broadcast any other stories - of a type whose credibility cannot be established 60 years after the closure of the Tuam home - but at least the public should be made aware that the source is unreliable?
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