We have been covering the story of the mass stabbing in Ireland by an immigrant that has resulted in anger, riots and media malpractice. For a little background, let’s go to this article:
Protesters take to the street in Dublin after knife attack that injured 3 children, one seriously
— AustralianConservative (@AustConserva) November 24, 2023
Protests broke out in central Dublin on Thursday evening after Irish police said a 5-year-old girl was receiving emergency medical treatment...https://t.co/oSiNMjQ5tH
From the New York Post:
Protests broke out in central Dublin on Thursday evening after Irish police said a 5-year-old girl was receiving emergency medical treatment following an attack that involved a knife.
A woman and two other children were injured.
Irish police said they weren’t treating the case as terror-related, and that a man in his 50s, who was also hospitalized with serious injuries, is a ‘person of interest.’
Police said they have a ‘definite line of inquiry’ and that they weren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the violence outside a school in the heart of Dublin soon after 1:30 p.m.
So, reading between the lines, they seem to be saying that the person of interest—whoever he is—is the person they think did it. But that article didn’t identify the person or tell us very much about his background.
However, an Irish media outlet named Gript thought they had the information. To be blunt, we never heard of them until this controversy blew up but they describe themselves as having positions that would map reasonably well to what we call ‘conservative’ in America:
We [in Ireland] are also undergoing dramatic changes, and too often, it seems like we cannot talk about those changes openly. People who think immigration is too high are automatically denounced as racists. People who object to their young children learning in primary school that their own gender is a choice are afraid to speak up, for fear of being thought of as somehow backward. People who worry that they cannot afford a carbon tax are accused of having a personal hand in the destruction of the planet, and those who believe in a God often feel like they must keep it a secret for fear of being mocked.
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In any case, they claimed to know who the ‘person of interest’ was and now today they are admitting they screwed up:
A statement from Gript Media:https://t.co/uvA0KW65MG
— gript (@griptmedia) November 30, 2023
From the piece:
This morning, just after 9am, more than 17 hours after the story that appeared on this page on Gript.ie was published the Garda Press Office contacted Gript to say that the unnamed person referred to in the story that appeared at this link yesterday, is not, in fact, a person of interest in the events of last Thursday.
Gript Media’s original reporting was sourced from a member of an Garda Siochána. It was further cross-checked against publicly available records, and while the name of the suspect was not reported, that name was put to a senior Justice official on the basis of an informal ‘cross-check’ before publication.
Gript Media, like other media outlets, has a firm policy of never naming any individual suspected in relation to a criminal act until such time as that person has been charged with a crime, and confirming that there are no reporting restrictions in place. In this case, we kept to that policy, while cross-checking our details with our sources in the usual way.
We are investigating the circumstances of this error, including giving due consideration to the question of whether this media outlet was deliberately deceived by a senior justice official. If we determine that to have been the case, then our obligation to protect the anonymity of those sources will be considered forfeit.
So, to unpack it a bit … yesterday they gave a lot of background information about the man who they believed was the person of interest, but apparently didn’t name him. Now, today they are withdrawing the entire story, being convinced that they named the wrong man and they have basically substituted this correction for original story. You can’t read the original story on their site, anymore. This correction is placed at the original story's link. But others picked up the story and quoted from it. For instance, this National Review piece quotes some from it:
The Algerian man who allegedly tried to stab three children in Dublin arrived in Ireland in 1999 and had been subject to deportation orders for several years.
— National Review (@NRO) November 30, 2023
He evaded deportation with the help of government-funded NGOs. | @michaelbd https://t.co/AJibfkjctI
From the article:
Gript.ie has the details on the Algerian-born man who attempted to stab three children in central Dublin last Thursday, which resulted in several serious injuries and preceded a riot. It’s not a surprise that the government wants to focus on the threat of the ‘far right’ and hate speech, because the original crime shows the government to be incompetent in the extreme.
The man, whose name cannot yet be shared, arrived in Ireland in 1999 and had been subject to deportation orders for several years. The government had repeatedly concluded that his asylum claim was bogus or defunct. He evaded those deportation orders with the help of government-funded NGOs, lobby groups that the government funds as a kind of astro-turfed civil society.
‘At each step, until the 2008 court decision, the state firmly opposed any and all efforts to grant the suspect leave to remain in Ireland. For nine years, he had lived here without permission to remain. However, it should be noted that no efforts are on record of the state attempting to enforce the deportation order which was live, and in place, for a full five years. For a period of time, the suspect was classified as an ‘evader’ — somebody who is actively evading the law and avoiding their own deportation.
‘Nevertheless, and arguably as a result, it came to be that the state was compelled, finally, to grant subsidiary protection, and leave to remain. The suspect later became a naturalised Irish citizen. Gript Media understands that he was never able to hold down a job in Ireland, and was provided with housing by at least one Irish NGO, separate to the NGOs that aided him in his legal battle against deportation.’
Read the whole sorry saga. The story is going to highlight the weird and large role NGOs play in Ireland, both in shaping the law and helping ‘the politically correct’ evade it. And it is also going to highlight the fact that the Irish government gives deportation orders but does not in the majority of cases ever take real action to deport people at all.
All of which has aged pretty badly, given that the person they are talking about is not the stabber. Of course, a reasonable person can still say ‘what the heck is going on that they didn’t actually remove this person, even if he is not a mass stabber?’ For instance, here’s a reporter asking their Minister for Social Protection about why they granted citizenship to a man who has never held a job in Ireland:
Asylum 'refugee' who stabbed a woman and 3 children was in Ireland for 23 years and never worked a day.
— Dane (@UltraDane) November 29, 2023
"Ms Minister, do you feel its appropriate for migrants to come to Ireland and sponge off the gov't for 23 years?"
"Well there's a long process to getting employment" pic.twitter.com/ePKXXwYbNs
And we will note that none of this means that the stabber is not an Algerian immigrant, as that reporting appears to be independent of Gript’s reporting, nor can we say that their reporting played any role in the rioting since that happened before Gript made its error. But we can be sure this misstep will be exploited to suggest that the anger over immigration is wrongheaded.
Gript are reporting that Gardai either lied to them yesterday or knowingly provided them with false information.
— MichaeloKeeffe (@Mick_O_Keeffe) November 30, 2023
This is Ireland.
You can’t even trust the Gardai to tell the truth. https://t.co/1K45HuEGdk
That is a reference to the Garda Siochána, which is basically the police. Many people seem to be blaming the government for the error and thinking conspiratorially about the whole thing.
IRELAND 🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪
— Tracy O'Hanlon 🇮🇪 (@tracyohanlon74) November 30, 2023
BREAKING NEWS 🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪
This is SHOCKING !!!
An Garda Síochana have fed false information to Gript Media ‼️‼️
Gript are now investigating further regarding this info which was supplied by a Senior member of the Gardai, If they find they were deliberately deceived,… https://t.co/pluOMfr1QO
IRELAND—As if the story couldn’t get worse—was the media outlet at the centre of backlash for its reporting on the ethnicity and background of the Algerian man who stabbed three children in Dublin—set up by a source in the Gardaí in new report?@john_mcguirk of @griptmedia: https://t.co/wHWczZA6km pic.twitter.com/IM6R4ZzjOz
— Bree A Dail (@breeadail) November 30, 2023
When journalists can’t trust state sources, it’s a deliberate attempt to undermine the credibility of the media. It is in fact State sponsored disinformation. https://t.co/3FphMVcKTd
— Keith Redmond (@ExCllrRedmond) November 30, 2023
Dirty tricks at play to bring down the only media source in Ireland which reports the truth regardless of hurty feelz https://t.co/WOlI7jJ0fG
— Dr Grace O'Malley 🇮🇪🇮🇹 (@MalleyNotagain) November 30, 2023
This statement reads like a threat at the end. Very odd for a media company, I'm sure journalists hear all sorts and the job is to sort through info and verify before you publish. No? https://t.co/8Hz06weV92
— Neasa Hourigan TD (@neasa_neasa) November 30, 2023
Well, not a physical threat, but they are saying, reasonably, that if a source burned them, they will not honor any promise of anonymity.
A newspaper that incited mass riots with their half assed facts now release a statement admitting they did not do sufficient due diligence before accusing the wrong person of an incredibly serious crime https://t.co/5sMcBEnD8Q
— Layman's Science (@LaymansScience) November 30, 2023
See what we mean about people blaming them for riots they weren’t responsible for?
People in the comments so desperate to believe that Gript were deliberately set up because they are such a "threat" rather than acknowledge that they have no standards and are in fact unethical grifters stirring up hate for clicks. https://t.co/xU8Vr7UhyZ
— Karen Ⓥ (@KCRon121) November 30, 2023
I’m sure many journalists from other outlets were sent Gript’s original story with the question: “Why aren’t you covering this?”
— Amy Molloy (@AmyMolloyIndo) November 30, 2023
Here’s your answer. https://t.co/0ZbTgSsjqi
The problem with Gript is that they are only interested in negative migration stories for political reasons. They are the. Propaganda arm of foreign financed Right wing interests aligned with MAGA and Koch brothers. https://t.co/XwGv4K5fro
— Brian McDonagh (@brianmcdonagh) November 30, 2023
BlueAnon has entered the chat.
Threatening to reveal their own source is as low as getting the facts wrong
— Kieran Walsh (@kieransopinion) November 30, 2023
I'd say John and his team must be beyond mortified today.
But they got their likes, and stirred the pot which is all that matters. https://t.co/3DrfySzhyV
It is downright common for media outlets to say, more or less, ‘if you lie to us, we are going to out you as that liar.’ In that hypothetical, the lie would itself be a major story, because it is a public official lying to a media outlet. There’s nothing ‘low’ about that statement.
Unbelievable. They get caught in a lie and frame it as a conspiracy where they have been deliberately deceived. https://t.co/9N7kDIkNEt
— Patrick Crumlish (@patrickcrumlish) November 30, 2023
Um, how does this person know that Gript was lying and not merely repeating bad information that was given to them?
Life comes at you real fast sometimes… #Gript pic.twitter.com/M7BAZaj9V5
— Greg Murphy 🤓 (@TheGregMurphy) November 30, 2023
Indeed, here’s the author of that article defending the reporting:
People in Ireland really need to ask themselves:
— Richard (@ricwe123) November 28, 2023
Why am i listening to people who lie to me?
We don't do this in real life.
So why do we accept this from the media?
Bullshit journalist challenges Gript editor for releasing the nationality of perpetrator of stabbing incident to… pic.twitter.com/oZa2yRaQbf
Again, his point was they weren’t disputing his factual claim, they just thought journalists should censor reality. And on that factual understanding, he is right. But then they can now pretend they were talking about the accuracy of the report—which they weren’t.
Finally, someone brings up another good point.
Gript tend to tell lies and spin truth just like the Irish Independent, RTE, Newsletter, Belfast Telegraph etc.
— Westie 🇮🇪🇵🇸 (@westie1988ie) November 30, 2023
All as bad as each other
The only way in my opinion to stop innocent people being targeted is to name scumbag who tried to murder 3 small children and their teacher. https://t.co/ABU761WBbd
This is true. If the government had simply named the suspect, none of this would have happened. It has become clear to us in recent years that the governments in the British Isles restrict reporting about criminal matters entirely too much.
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