News website apologizes for ISIS-themed April Fools' Day story
A regional news website in Ireland moved quickly to distance itself Friday from an Islamic State-themed April Fools' Day story on its site.
KildareNow published a story about a man dubbed "Paddy Jihaddy" who annexed a part of County Kildare in Ireland, raising the ISIS flag and renaming the area, which is called the Hill of Allen, the Hill of Allah.
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“Irish security forces have placed a ring of steel around the Allen area and road diversions are in place until further notice after an anonymous phone call by a male calling himself Paddy Jihaddy said he had rigged the area with explosives and that he was renaming the the locality the Hill of Allah," the story, which has now been removed from the website, read.
The story was quickly spotted on Twitter and singled out as being in poor taste.
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KildareNow said the story, which also appeared on the website's social media accounts, was "completely unauthorised" and not posted by a member of their editorial team.
"KildareNow would like to apologise unreservedly to everybody who was rightly offended by the article which was extremely insensitive especially in light of recent tragic events in Brussels and elsewhere," it says in a statement on its website.
The statement adds that a full "internal investigation" is now underway.
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Blathnaid Healy is the UK Editor at Mashable. She joined the company in October 2014 and is based in the London office. Before Mashable, Blathnaid was Content Manager and COO of WorldIrish, a startup focused on the Irish diaspora. She spent almost five years working at Ireland’s largest media company RTE as a multimedia journalist where she also set up the broadcaster’s first dedicated social media team and project managed output for several high-profile events across web, mobile and social media. Blathnaid has reported from the US, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Romania and, of course, Ireland. And in case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced Blan-id.
