The Irish Times: Past and Present

by Arek Mon Aug 18, 2008 21:09

The link below is a recording from the "Talking history" programme on Newstalk 106 (10/8/08). Tommy Graham interviews John Martin about his book.

http://www.atholbooks.org/interview.mp3

by shirt no tie Fri May 30, 2008 11:17

A good snappy review in a fringe periodical I rarely read. Newspapers like to beat a drum about themselves (or is that blow a trumpet?) and let readers know that the papers are on their side. The British tabloids are resolute in exposing bent businessmen and corrupt politicians...up to a point. In exchange for occasional populist moralising against cheats and bullies they make sure readers wave the flag when "our troops" are sent somewhere to make the world safe for democracy and big business.

In its own way the Irish Times moved gradually from being an old boys westbrit club to being a liberal clarion for the emerged 1960s catholic middle classes. The remaining old boys held in there in the background, and it would be interesting to know what furtive strings they managed to pull with the editors during those days.Liberalism in Ireland during the 70s, 80s and 90s meant liberal about contraception, divorce and relaxation of artistic censorship. Behind this facade there was a persistent support for entrenched capitalism and Dublin business networks. No matter how liberal a paper might be about sexual matters the bottom line is advertising revenue from businesses.

I would note in passing that Douglas Gageby was a refreshing editor in the cosy incurious Irish journalism scene from the 1960s onwards. He gave several young talented people a chance to show their mettle and they did so in the pages of the Irish Times. He served in the army during the Emergency of WW2 and was fundamentally a constitutional Irish patriot.

Sexual liberalism, described by a former independent senator as "pelvic issues', can be flaunted by right- and left-leaning newspapers and politicians. Even the PDs and the capitalist Independent Newspapers can be militantly on the same side as Labour and the Greens about abortion and divorce referenda. It's their shameless support for right-of-center economic policies that decides their moral status in my book.

Good luck to John Martin's new book. I hope we get hard hitting books about Independent Newspapers, the Sunday World and the Farmers Journal (!)

by Arek Fri May 30, 2008 08:29

Click on the link below for a review by An Phoblacht

http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/28190

By the way the Glor Anoir programme mentioned in the previous post was broadcast on 22/5/08.

by Arek Fri May 23, 2008 16:38

Interesting review of the book on the Glor Anoir programme on Raidio na Gaeltachta.

To download the Podcast click on the link below

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_gloranoir.xml

The programme lasts for 44 minutes. The review of the book begins after 27 minutes and ends on the 39 minute mark.

by John Martin - Irish Political Review Sat May 10, 2008 12:20

Renegade white nigger, all your contributions in this thread attempt to undermine the significance of the “white nigger” letter. From calling yourself “renegade white nigger” to saying that Fianna Fail people use the same expression. (Personally, I have never heard a Fianna Fail person use this expression).

Your latest comment suggests that my interest in this is a psychological condition (“obsession”). You then diminish the letter's significance by lumping it with a series of other scandals and conclude with a homily on the appalling state of Irish journalism as compared to British journalism, which indicates to me that your jaded cynicism masks a touching naivety.

I am surprised that you don't think there is a meaningful distinction between on the one hand individuals who happen to be British attempting to exert influence on an Irish newspaper and on the other hand the British State on the initiative of Prime Minister Harold Wilson exerting that influence.

Your view of the significance of the “white nigger” letter is not shared by The Irish Times. As my book shows, having failed to suppress the document, it had to deal with it following its publication in the Sunday Independent. The Irish Times dealt with this story by misrepresenting other documents from the British Public Records office dated 1969 which support the substance of what was revealed in the white nigger letter.

I share your contempt for Irish journalism (with the partial exception of Phoenix). Although the book is primarily about The Irish Times and its role in Irish society since 1859 the other newspapers do not emerge well from this story either.

by Renegade White Nigger Fri May 09, 2008 20:08

You might disagree with the tenor of my comments, but if you take a step back from your obsession with the Irish Times and the Trust, then you might appreciate that there is nothing more pernicious than the annihilation and assimilation of an entire culture, which is what is happening to Ireland now.

You might also appreciate that everyone in this thread has agreed with you that British and British State (strange distinction there) influences in the media are malign - especially when they are undisclosed and their mechanisms shrouded in secretive management practices. How about Ahern's and Haughey's complicity in preventing the investigation of British operations on this island and in this state? But everyone knows the Irish Times has a pro-British and effetely unionist leaning. Which is why the British state plants all its propaganda in other papers. Who publishes the identifying details of discarded informants, colluding in their murder?

The Irish media has little interest in investigative journalism of any kind and an aversion to any analysis of British influences or criticism of the Irish State in particular - which is why all investigation of shoot-to-kill, the Gibralter murders, Dublin Monahan bombings, clerical paedophilia etc has originated with Thames TV, the BBC etc. The Phoenix (currently stumbling in the dark with some very misinformed reports about Michael Semple) makes a brave solo run, especially on Shannon and extraordinary rendition, but the rest of the media doesn't much care until a story is already well and truly broken.

by John Martin - Irish Political Review Fri May 09, 2008 10:47

Miriam, I was perhaps a bit hard on the MediaBite article. MacAnthony was making a few off-the-cuff remarks about his experiences in The Irish Times well over 40 years ago at the time Alec Newman was Editor (Newman was sacked as editor in 1961). The Trust was not set up until 1974. And Major McDowell didn’t join the newspaper until 1962.

Nevertheless, I have a few more quibbles. John Arnott had no influence in the formation of the Trust. He had sold all his shares in the company by the late 1960s. Also people might be interested to know that there was another side to the benevolent chess playing aristo that MacAnthony portrays.

Douglas Gageby’s right hand man Donal Foley had a witty obituary following Arnott’s death in 1981. Foley worked in the London office with Sir John Arnott and some other peer. The left wing Foley referred to himself as the only “commoner” in the London office. He also says that Arnott was very right wing. If there was some big strike in progress Arnott would sigh “another day for the whip, what?” before writing 1200 words of anti trade union invective.

Finally, I disagree with the tenor of renegade white nigger’s comments. It wasn’t just British influence, but British State influence. While the influence of global capitalist economic interests has had a bad effect on the quality of journalism, the evidence of the influence of a foreign State - invited by the most powerful person in that newspaper - is in my view more pernicious.

by Miriam - MediaBite Thu May 08, 2008 11:28

I wish we had probed more on the issue of the IT trust too, John - a definite oversight in the article. To be fair though, it was more about Joe MacAnthony's personal story. He touched on many fascinating issues that deserve more attention and hopefully we'll all be hearing more from him in the near future.

It's not the central point of the discussion here but I still cannot get over the fact that you cannot see that Bertie Ahern at least is entirely the author of his own fall from grace. It's such an atrocious example on which to base your case that it tends to undermine it - though as was said many times on the other thread about this - there can't be many people who would not assume that the Brits and the Yanks both maintain a strong influence in Irish life and politics.

Ain't that the truth about the IT's letters page, though, Justin! I've mentioned this before but the one that got me all choked up on my cornflakes was a complaint from a gent in a Dublin burb acouple of years back about how he had recently had to walk in the drizzle across the tarmc to the terminal at Dublin Airport. Couldn't something be done about this outrage, he enquired? How the letters page editor saw fit to prioritise that over the countless number of urgent issues that folk write into the IT about every day, entirely defeats me.

by Renegade White Nigger Wed May 07, 2008 17:52

No, I certainly do think that ANY influence on media freedom is potentially problematic, as should be obvious in my comments above. The historical British influence on the IT's editorial line was clearly not in the public interest - but what about the far greater current influence that British and US interests exert on the Irish Independent? This is particularly problematic in light of the INM board's refusal to reveal conflicts of interest, their incestuous and cross-group appointments and their failure to adopt common ethical standards.

The Indo's anti-Sinn Fein and anti-IRA bigotry is particularly repugnant, as much so as the IT's racism and anti-integrationist stance.

But, as I also said, the greatest threat to Ireland's media is economic and exerted through broadcast media and mobile telephony ownership and licensing. Irish media is slowly being assimilated and annihilated.

by John Martin - Irish Political Review Wed May 07, 2008 08:56

“Renegade white nigger”, am I correct in saying that you don’t think that British State influence over an Irish newspaper is an important issue?

Also, with due respect to Mediabite, and its interesting interview with Joe McAnthony, there is no real analysis of the Trust.

In particular there is no mention of the extraordinary power accorded to Major McDowell from 1974 to 2001. There is no mention of the Oath of secrecy required of Governors of the Trust and Directors of the Irish Times Ltd, which remained in force after 2001 and as far as I know still remains in force.

As I have said before on Indymedia, Mediabite is rightly concerned about the influence of capitalist interests on the media, but has a blindspot when it comes to the influence of other interests.

by Renegade White Nigger Tue May 06, 2008 14:03

The quality of writing has slipped, true, but the standards of Irish print media are appalling. The only articles that are correctly spelled, syntactically correct and unambiguous are either pasted off a newswire or opinion pieces (and the current crop of lunatic fringe and right-wing mainstream writers do possess some fine writing skills). But there is undeniable political bias to both the PD agenda and a resurgent family-values underground where some notable public figures (ombudsmen and presidents for example) are given uncritical free reign.

There is an interesting article "In media exile - Part 1, An interview with Joe MacAnthony" which discusses the IT, the IT Trust and media bias - http://www.mediabite.org/article_In-media-exile---Part-....html - it is all the better for pointing out much more serious conflicts of interest and omitting to mention renegade white niggers.

Besides, the greatest threat to media independence in Ireland now is in broadcast media where the government has put itself in hock to Murdoch's Sky platform and other foreign interests. The Taoiseach's family's Murdoch-related financial interests include Celia's book advances from Hyperion and Nicky Byrne / Westlife's contracts with Sony / BMG / RCA. Selling out GAA coverage, delaying terrestrial (free view) digital, strangling RTE TG4's output and now exempting digital viewers from license fees are all furthering market share (circa 70% of viewers) of predatory foreign interests at the expense of local production. The future is wall-to-wall Lost, Neighbours, Sex and the City with a smattering of leprechaun news and sport when it isn't too inconvenient.

by media consumer Sat May 03, 2008 15:24

Many years ago I heard the editor of the Irish Independent (not Vinnie of recent decades) describe a daily newspaper as "the poor man's university". To my mind that could be the ideal function of a broadsheet newspaper. I have childhood memories of seeing working men, some of them retired, perusing firstly the sports pages of the Independent and the Irish Press and making notes for their daily flutter on the horses. Then they scanned the national news and maybe read the headlines and intro paragraphs of foreign stories. These men had finished formal schooling at age 14 but they could read and enjoy reading the sports pages at any rate and they had an impressionist awareness of Ireland and the world during the 1950s and 60s. I won't idealise the week-to-week lives they led trying to get by on their modest earnings from manual labour. They enjoyed their pints, playing darts and following Saturday afternoon racing on the wireless and later on pub black/white television.

Irish newspapers in the past had their faults but they weren't anything like the low level infotainment, celeb worship and sexshockhorror diet that is served up to manual and other lowpaid workers today (and served up pseudointellectually to middleclass readers in so-called quality papers). Schooling standards seem to have slipped a lot. I'd guess that nowadays a lot of young fellows leaving school aged 16 or older wouldn't have the ability to scrutinise the racing pages of newspapers and make reasoned guesses as to the chances of fancied horses being placed. I know gambling is frivolous but I mention this to show how newspaper readers and the journalists who write for them have changed radically.

But I digress. Yes, we should be concerned about the present condition of the 'liberal' Irish Times, Justin. It is very much a viewspaper rather than a hard newspaper. A hardcore of three or six columnists constantly presume to articulate Irish intellectual life for the readership while many private individuals with considered opinions and specialised knowledge on several subjects never get to write in its pages unless they have occasional letters published.

I could go on but I'd like to read other commentators on the current state of Irish print media.

by Justin Morahan Sat May 03, 2008 13:34

Like "media consumer", I too used to have a high regard for the Irish Times although I never fell for the myth that it was the Paper of record. When the late Michael Mills began to write for the Irish Press, I regarded him as the fairest and most independent journalist in Ireland.

Thanks to "media consumer" for supplying a list above, so allowing me to question myself on them one by one vis-a-vis the present Irish Times.

1) Is the present Irish Times the reliable paper of record? No it is not, sadly. Today, there is an excess of "opinion writers" at the expense of true reporters. There has also been a particularly heavy influx of politicians among these "opinion writers", such that the pages inside often open with a dull thud.

2) Are the Irish Times writers the best practitioners of the Queen's English? I don't know about the Queen's, but to rephrase the question, The best writers of English? Again, not so today, sadly, with a few notable exceptions

3) Does the paper stand up for the underdog? Definitely No. See Indymedia Ireland link

4) Does it put thought before sensation? Mostly yes, but there is some slippage.

5} Does it seek to promote progress? Sadly No, more likely that it seeks to promote "progressive", that is a Progressive Democrat agenda

6) Letters page? Lively? Paragon of open debate? Definitely No. Quite the opposite. This is the biggest fall from grace of all on the part of the Irish Times.
There was a time when most people I knew bought the IT for the Letters Page.
But now, The Letters Page has shrunken beyond belief - for example, a mere nine letters in today's edition where there used to be twenty or thirty in the good old days. When an item of news was of particular interest, the Letters page often became two pages of letters. This was at a time when there was less than half the number of pages in the IT.

7) Reportage impartiality? Definitely not. The fault here, as with other newspapers, is often the acceptance of a syndicated report from one journalist which the paper prints in good faith. Only this week I had to write a letter to the Editor about her acceptance of such a report by Ray Managh of a case where a Judge awarded another Judge €17,500 in a case of defamation. See Indymedia Ireland link

8) Is the Irish Times today politically independent? Given the proviso above, that the tone of the whole paper has changed in the direction of an unintereting PD jangle of economic theories presented as news, otherwise, I would say probably Yes.

Sorry I haven't read the book but looking forward to it.

by Corkman Fri May 02, 2008 11:59

There will probably be a more detailed review of the John Martin book in either
"History Ireland" or "Books Ireland".

Those with a serious interest in Irish newspaper history should read
the excellent "De Valera, Fianna Fail and the "Irish Press" by Mark O'Brien.

by Arek Fri May 02, 2008 11:03

Interesting article in the Phoenix on the book.

phoenix.pdf 0.35 Mb