AP Expands on Corrections of ‘Tuam Babies’ Story

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 dispostion 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.

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.

You can read America‘s coverage here and here.