Abstract
On May 29, 2018, at a press conference in Dublin, the then Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) Katherine Zappone revealed that 126 cases where births had been illegally registered between 1946 and 1969 had been discovered by Tusla in the records of former religious-run adoption society St Patrick’s Guild (SPG). The records had transferred to the Child and Family Agency in 2016 when the adoption society ceased offering a service at the end of 2014. Dr. Zappone rightly acknowledged that the practice of illegally registering births to facilitate illegal adoptions had been known for many years but also presented a new narrative. Whereas previously there were suspicions about such practices, here, for the first time, was categoric proof. Hard evidence that hundreds of Irish citizens had their identities stripped from them, without their consent or knowledge. Large sections of the media took hold of the story and unquestioningly sponsored this State narrative. The State was presented as a proactive actor in an emerging ‘scandal’. Through material obtained through Freedom of Information and other evidence obtained while a working journalist, this paper puts forward a counter-narrative around the illegal birth registrations issue. It outlines how the State had both knowledge and proof of documented cases going back more than a decade, yet took no action. This paper examines the role of the press in selecting and framing the illegal adoption ‘scandal’ and the impact of this reporting on public opinion and understanding of the issue.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—Democratic Disorder: Disinformation, the Media and Crisis in a Time of Change
KEYWORDS
Scandal, Framing, AgendaSetting, IllegalAdoption
