UNITED STATES
WGBH News
By SCOTT NEUMAN
Originally published on Mon June 23, 2014
The Associated Press today offers “a more sober picture” than it and other news organizations (including NPR) did earlier this month regarding reports of nearly 800 bodies of infants and young children at a former Catholic home for unwed mothers in Ireland.
The case of the “mother and baby home,” located in the town of Tuam near Galway city, “offers a study in how exaggeration can multiply in the news media, embellishing occurrences that should have been gripping enough on their own,” the AP writes.
The reports were based on research by Catherine Corless, who spent years seeking records of the deaths of children at the orphanage during the years it was open, from 1925 to 1961.
Specifically, the AP points to an investigation by The Irish Times in Dublin that revealed discrepancies in maps used by Corless to determine where the bodies might have ended up. It also said reports that many of the children had never been baptized were rebutted by records. Other evidence called into question whether the decommissioned septic tank could have been used as a burial site, the AP said.
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