Broadsheet are reporting on an Irish Independent article which (either deliberately or out of sheer stupidity) has done a hatchet job on a Polish waitress living in Ireland. It stems from the comments on this Reddit thread.

It brings to mind another article on the Independent.ie website in April 2011 which was brought to my attention after some kneejerk reactions on Twitter along the lines of “what a waste of money”.

Ian O’Doherty reported that Fás were spending:

“nearly 80 grand on a course — that teaches people from the Roma community about Irish Travellers.”

O’Doherty spouts on for a couple of paragraphs and finishes off his piece :

“Also, you might be forgiven for wondering if the money would be better spent buying one-way tickets back to Romania and Bulgaria for those Roma who have never worked here and are claiming social welfare.

OK — all complaints for the above sentiment can be sent to the Press Council. “

After reading it and some of the Twitter reaction, I contacted Fás to get information on the course. Here is the course O’Doherty wrote about.

The course is “to provide participants, representatives of the local travelling community, with a forum for understanding and learning, with a view to integrating marginalised members of the community more fully into local life and with the skills to access further training and or employment opportunities.”

That’s very different from what O’Doherty riled up his readers about. Don’t know about you, but anything which helps marginalised members of a community with a voice and an opportunity for further training with a view to getting a job is a good thing. Certainly not something to misrepresent in such a deliberate way and he has no excuse of there being anything “lost in translation”.