The Irish Times has been roundly criticised for posting a headline that inaccurately claimed 75% of GPs had signed up for an abortion hotline. In fact, only 200 GPs out of 3000 had agreed to do abortions and that only 75% of those 200 agreed to their names being used in an abortion hotline.
Cora Sherlock of the Pro-life Campaign commented on twitter: ‘Shouldn’t this read “200 GPs out of approximately 3000 have signed up”. [1] The 75% refers to that 200 which means 150 out of 3000 GPs in Ireland have signed up. So that’s 5%, not 75%. Please correct this misleading headline so it actually reflects the facts.’
The Irish Times subsequently scrubbed all trace of the original headline. However, the social media [2] they had used to promote the article continued to have the same inaccurate headline.