Washington Post Corrects: Prince Charles Has Never Denied Being in the IRA

An article published about a meeting between Prince Charles and Gerry Adams briefly disappeared from the Washington Post‘s website Tuesday. The article, with the byline “bangshowbiz.com,” included an odd statement that “Prince Charles has always denied he’s a member of the IRA.”

The Post pulled the piece to investigate it and later replaced it with a correction:

Correction: An earlier version of this story transposed the names of Prince Charles and Gerry Adams. This version has been corrected.

A Post spokesperson tells Washingtonian the paper has “an experimental partnership with Bangshowbiz.com, an entertainment syndicate service, to offer our readers additional entertainment news and updates.” The Post “removed this post initially to investigate the issue with the vendor” before correcting it, the spokesperson says.

A couple of Irish news organizations had a little fun with the original article.

Oops. Bit of a booboo by the Washington Post. #princecharles h/t @robrtkc pic.twitter.com/5aRiD8FL94

— Michael O’Toole (@mickthehack) May 19, 2015

This is not the first piece of Charles-related content bangshowbiz.com has supplied to the Post. On May 14 it wrote about the prince calling for badgers to die and the next day it supplied a piece about him meeting regularly with British Prime Minister David Cameron. A search for the bangshowbiz.com byline on the Post’s site turned up dozens of articles, with titles like “Prince Harry caught a crocodile in Australia” and “Paris Hilton held funeral for Tinkerbell.” (Not the Disney character; it was her dog’s name.)

Bangshowbiz’s website describes itself as “the world’s premier entertainment news agency providing the most exciting celebrity news to online, print and broadcast media outlets across the globe,” founded by “Fleet Street showbiz columnist Rick Sky” and promises work by a “team of talented journalists writing the hottest celebrity news for audiences around the world and across the web.”

“If BANG isn’t running a story it isn’t worth knowing,” the site says.

Andrew Beaujon

Senior editor

Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. His book A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Soccer Team That Fought the Great War was published in 2018. He lives in Del Ray.