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Found via a twitter tweet by Adam Maguire – who found it in a thread by “scudster” on boards.ie

Check out the Irish Independent’s online article [no longer online, see comments below] about how Mary McAleese (the PRESIDENT of Ireland) believes that the church child abusers should be prosecuted. (Aside… Why is there even a debate about whether these heinous individuals who committed outrageous and disgusting crimes should be prosecuted or not? What’s to discuss? Just prosecute and severely punish the fuckers already).

According to the article, “Taoiseach Mary McAleese” told RTE that they should face prosecution and “Prime Minister Brian Cowen” said that “police” (should be ‘gardaí’) would have the government’s fullest co-operation in pursuing criminal investigations.

Why am I pointing this out? Well an IRISH paper should get the terms for McAleese (President of Ireland), Cowen (Taoiseach) and our national police force (An Garda Síochána or just ‘the gardaí’) correct as a natural matter of course – we shouldn’t see such glaring errors as these. I’m not just being picky (or pedantic!) – I’m just pointing out a serious cock-up – a failing in one of our national broadsheets to get something right – something fairly basic, at that.

Clearly, or so it would seem, the article was written by a British or other foreign journalist for an agency (such as Reuters or Associated Press) and just regurgitated by the Independent without being proof-read. I wonder did it make the print edition like this?

While this Irish paper (which obviously should know better) makes such a mistake about our President, the Boston Globe (McAleese is in Boston at the moment) got it right.

Here’s a screenshot of the Indo article for posterity, just in case they actually fix this error… and here it is below, with the pertinent points highlighted:

The mind really boggles as to how this could be allowed to slip through the cracks… and in all seriousness – what does this say about the quality (or lack thereof) of journalism in the national Irish printed press?!