Published: 7 February 2012
Region: Ireland & Worldwide
By Aidan White
A sensational tale of welfare tourism made front page news in Ireland on February 1. The story was broken by the country’s top selling daily the Irish Independent and it was a shocker. A Polish migrant called “Magda” spoke of her comfortable life on the dole and how she took advantage of state handouts. She scorned her adopted home of County Donegal in the North-West of Ireland as “a shit hole.”
This tale of greed and contempt was splashed under the headline “La Dole-ce Vita” and ticked all the boxes of tabloid prejudice. It was picked up and broadcast by other media, including Ireland’s public broadcaster RTE, provoking consternation and rage among some politicians.
Except it wasn’t true. Not even close.
Extraordinarily, the article had been lifted from the leading Polish national daily Gazeta Wyborca , badly translated, and selectively edited, distorting completely the meaning, tone and content of the original interview.
In fact, the words of Gaia Kowalik, the real name of the woman concerned, reveal that she loves Ireland, she hates being out of work and more than anything she is looking for opportunities to get a job.
As the Polish ambassador pointed out in an article the following day, her story was one of thoughtful reflection and regret when, after three years working happily as a trained nanny in Ireland, she suddenly found herself out of work.
The truth eventually emerged for the Irish audience as public radio and other newspapers picked through the controversy and outrage from within the Polish community that followed the Irish Independent story.
But questions remain as to how the Independent had concocted this story. As editors
butchered and rearranged Gaia’s words they omitted text that went against their chosen narrative, including the telling sentence “I have a big problem with being unemployed and I don’t want to live at the state’s expense and for that reason I use this assistance to help me get back into work. “
Equally troubling is the claim she made later on RTE radio that this was more than mistranslation. She accused the Irish Independent of adding additional and inaccurate information to the story.
Chastened morning news bulletins on Irish public radio on February 2 apologised to listeners for how they had first reported the story, by lifting and rebroadcasting the offending article. Another RTE programme tracked Gaia down and invited her to tell her own story. A loud-mouthed politician who had added his own intemperate comments to the Independent story also made his excuses.
But the Independent showed no remorse. The following day the paper ran the original interview, without explanation, this time correctly translated, as well as a two-column response from the Polish ambassador warning that this sort of irresponsible journalism is damaging to Ireland’s Polish community, the country’s largest migrant group. It also printed angry letters of condemnation from Polish immigrants, but without any comment.
In an age when the press struggles to maintain credibility and relevance, the paper’s lack of professionalism, not just in the journalism that produced the original article but in failing to offer any word of explanation or regret, much less an apology either to readers or to their victim, illustrates how arrogance and hubris still contaminate the culture of media management in Ireland.
When newspapers don’t own up to their mistakes there is every reason to worry that they have abandoned their responsibility to be transparent and ethical.