On April 27th 2018 an Irish Online news agitator website called thejournal.ie ran a factcheck investigating the claims by ProLife posters that one in five babies are aborted in England. You can see thejournal.ie's views on this claim here: http://www.thejournal.ie/save-the-8th-poster-statistic-abortion-3951738-Apr2018/
In it's conclusion, thejournal.ie decided that the ProLife's claims were unproven which was quite surprising at first, but when one eagle-eyed Twitter user spotted something unusual about the article, one quickly begins to see a more sinister trend at play.
Paul Griffin took to Twitter late on Friday afternoon highlighting how thejournal.ie changed it's FactCheck from the exact same claim covered back in November 2016 where it found the ProLife claim about one in five to be "Mostly True".@TJ_FactCheck have a new "fact check" saying the 1 in 5 poster is unproven when before it was mostly true. To change it now simply isn't credible when the abortion ratio/rate is internationally measured per live births. This is campaigning for repeal. It's revisionism. #8thref pic.twitter.com/Gybu4yVVgS— Paul Griffin (@PGriffinFC) April 27, 2018
You can see the November 2016 article by thejournal.ie here: http://www.thejournal.ie/yes-to-life-life-institute-8th-amendment-abortion-leaflet-facts-3058066-Nov2016/
However thejournal.ie quickly noted Griffin's tweet and moved to edit the November 2016 article to cover up it's bias and make Griffin look like fake news.
While the actions of thejournal.ie were quick to cover-up their inconsistency, they failed to remember that a popular website "Internet Archive - Wayback Machine" captures a snapshot of pretty much every website out there and hosts it on it's own servers for all to see, which is useful in tracking how "news" and "facts" are edited and changed to suit a narrative.
The un-edited thejournal.ie article is captured here: https://web.archive.org/web/20171130080349/http://www.thejournal.ie/yes-to-life-life-institute-8th-amendment-abortion-leaflet-facts-3058066-Nov2016/ and just in case thejournal.ie lobby the Wayback Machine to change it's page, LoneHurler also took a screenshot of it for everyone to see:
With the referendum on the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution taking place on May 25th this underhanded reporting of "facts" by a website that boasts up to 400,000 followers across Ireland is nothing short of scandalous. LoneHurler would urge everyone to make a complaint about this to the Press Ombudsman here: http://www.presscouncil.ie and stop the mainstream media in Ireland effectively campaigning for the repeal of the eighth amendment to the Irish Constitution which reads:
"The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right."
