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I got into a little bit of an argument the other day with Peter Murtagh, once of the Irish Times, who was a little upset with this tweet that I sent. My views on the threats allegedly levelled at the Taoiseach’s family were, per Peter, “shameful”:
A shameful and distorting comment that shows the writer is not primarily a journalist. https://t.co/26kp3l432O
— Peter Murtagh (@PeterMurtagh) August 6, 2024
I’ll preface what I’m about to say here by saying that when Peter Murtagh accuses me of doing something shameful, I take it seriously. We may disagree fundamentally in many areas, but I’ve met Peter on sufficient occasions to have formed a broadly positive view of him as a person, and he has earned in his career the right to be taken seriously on matters of journalism. For all that, however, I think he’s talking utter bunkum here.
One of the big problems with Irish journalism, I’d argue, is the issue of where sympathy and empathy lies. It is not hard to sympathise with Simon Harris on the threats that he has allegedly received, because Simon Harris is on the face of things a decent middle class fellow with a kind and engaging wife and young children – the very model, in many ways, of an upstanding family man. He is also, even those of us who are his critics must concede, a hard worker. Paradoxically, it seems at least likely that many of those allegedly threatening him might lack many of his manners and much of his class, not to mention his success in his chosen field. As stories go, it’s perfectly set up for him to be the sympathetic character – so long as people like me are writing the story.
And this is just it. People like me are writing the stories, almost all of them.
By “people like me” I do not mean, of course, people with my political views, but people of my social background: Not only am I a middle class Trinity College Educated homeowner, but I actually knew Simon Harris quite well in our respective youths. We moved (at one point) in similar circles. We watch the same kind of television, read the same kind of newspapers, married the same kind of women. A threat to Simon Harris therefore feels like a threat to one of us. Journalists, also mostly being “us”, are horrified.
By contrast, very few of “us” are from the kinds of community that produce the sorts of people who allegedly issued the threats to Harris. When “we” hear stories of women afraid to walk the streets because a migrant might sexually assault them, we arch one eyebrow and sniff to ourselves that such a thing is statistically unlikely, and besides Irish men rape women too. Because “we” would never phrase things a particular way, we look down to some extent on those who do. “We” do not take it seriously because “we” are educated enough – we think – to know a little bit better.
Of course there are differences. The woman in a working class community is not afforded, like Simon Harris, 24/7 garda protection from special branch. Nor does she have that middle class privilege that it is to be taken seriously when you express a concern about your safety because you know the correct language to use. She’s also probably being backed up, on the internet, by the sorts of chaps who sometimes come across as if they’re only dying for a woman to be raped by a foreigner so they have an excuse to say “I told you so”. All of it sends the media running for the smelling salts, because, in the words of Kitty Holland, it is “not helpful”.
Threats to Simon Harris, in their own way, are helpful, because they help us tell the story we want to tell: That the real threat in Irish society comes not from migrants but from right wing thugs intent on undermining democracy. A story that advances the narrative will always be preferred over one that does not.
There is not much we can do about this other than be aware of it, which is the instance where, I fear, in this case Peter Murtagh fails. Because the point I’m making is a simple one: Not only do people in working class estates in Dublin lack the Garda Protection that Simon Harris (rightly) has – they also lack the access to media credulity that he has. Journalists will take his safety seriously, but are much less inclined to take their safety seriously, especially if doing so involves confronting uncomfortable truths rather than comfortable ones.
I write this, for example, on a day when RTE reports that a person “believed to be from Jordan” has been denied bail on charges of rape and false imprisonment of a woman. The alleged perpetrator in that case is only “believed” to be from Jordan because, presumably, the same Government that let him into the country didn’t investigate his background sufficiently to be even certain of his origin. That Government now alleges, through the DPP, that the person they let into the country committed a violent crime against a woman. The threat to that woman’s safety, it is fair to say, was more real and more imminent than the threat to that of Simon Harris. The difference is that he has Garda protection, and she does not.
Yet women across the country who feel unsafe or threatened by this situation transparently do not have the same access to the airwaves or the newsprint as Simon Harris does – he has the luxury of sending a press release and being believed, they do not.
That is one of the imbalances we seek to address, here at Gript. In many ways, I will always be a “people like me” – as will many others. The thing is, to understand the country you have to at least be aware of the limitations of your own perspective. We try to do that here. They don’t try hard enough, for my money, in many other outlets.
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