Ouch.

It seems so:

A leading Irish academic and former Fulbright scholar who is an expert on disinformation and ‘fake news’ has been falsely claiming to have a doctorate from a distinguished English university, Prime Time has established.
Tom Felle, an associate professor at University of Galway’s Department of Journalism and Media who was head of the department until last year, has been described as “Dr Tom Felle” on the university’s website, including in prospectuses designed to attract students to study at the college.

rte.ie

This is a serious scandal, and a journalism program that wants credibility should have done some digging to verify. They didn’t.

The article itself is a must-read as it goes into detail: what Felle claimed, but also how the journalist uncovered the lie, which took some doing.

We can talk about the irony of it all, but that would overshadow the real scandal and the very real way that scandal was exposed.

As much as I can heap praise on this article, there is one important gap here: we know who lied, what happened, when it happened, where it happened, and how it happened. But the why, the motive, still eludes us. I hope there is a follow-up article that sheds light on this question. Otherwise, kudos.