The headlines out of Ireland reverberated around the world, and how could they not? As reports had it, over several decades nearly 800 dead babies had been secretly dumped in a septic tank at a Roman Catholic maternity home for unwed mothers and their children in Tuam, County Galway. Ireland’s dark past was under the microscope again, and everyone wanted a peek.

London’s Independent called the discovery at St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home “the Irish Holocaust,” a term usually reserved for the 1845–52 famine. The Guardian demanded, “Tell us the truth about the children dumped in Galway’s mass graves.” The Washington Post headlined its report, “Bodies of 800 children, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers,” which was promptly picked up by The Sydney Morning Herald. The spetic-tank claims were reported to readers of publications as diverse as The New York Daily News, Salon and Al-Jazeera. Weeks later and the scandal rumbled on, dominating the news in Ireland, a searing indictment of a country already home to too many scandals involving the historical nexus of Church and state.

The only problem was that in the gleeful rush to report and judge, the truth got lost.

The Associated Press last week issued a lengthy correction admitting that the septic tank might not contain any human remains at all; the wire service had also incorrectly reported that the children hadn’t been baptized because they were born out of wedlock. Other media outlets have been slower to dial down the hyperbole. Britain’s Guardian newspaper amended a headline on an opinion piece, removing the “dumped” claim, but most outlets have left their fact-free speculation to stand.

The truth is not entirely clear, but we know this: 796 babies are buried somewhere on the site of the old Bon Secours sisters’ home, which operated between 1925 and 1961. The records clearly show that. It’s also true that these institutions, into which unmarried women were placed by their families, has a higher infant mortality rate than the general population. In the 1920s, children born to unmarried mothers, mostly living in institutions, were six times more likely to die than children living at home with married parents. By the 1950s, they were three times higher, and by the 1960s it was equal, says historian Lindsey Earner-Byrne, author of Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin, 1922-60.