If you watched The Tonight Show on Virgin Media yesterday you can be in no doubt of how members of the panel attempted to lambast Gript editor John McGuirk, for the apparent crime of our publication’s decision to report objective facts about the suspect in the horrific Dublin school stabbing case.
Green Party member Hazel Chu said that Gript was “irresponsible” for reporting the fact that the suspect is originally from Algeria saying that at times like these “unity” should be prioritised. She also accused us of “whipping up fear”.
What does that mean? Why was she calling for some subjective idea of “unity” over factual reporting? Are the public not justified in their sense of fear after a man allegedly took a knife to three small kids and an innocent woman in broad daylight? Are Gript – not the knife wielding assailant – responsible?
Was it for the sake of the same notion of “unity” that the heartbroken boyfriend of Aisling Murphy had a significant part of his victim impact statement censored last week?
And perhaps the more important question is this – if this idea of “unity” and “responsible reporting” is shared by our colleagues elsewhere in the media, what other objective facts are they suppressing in that cause?
Ryan Casey, the young man who had the love of his life taken from him in the cruellest imaginable way, also had to suffer the insult of having his voice censored by people – presumably on the basis of views like Chu’s – who think they get to decide what information the Irish people do and don’t deserve to hear in the cause of “unity”.
I can only imagine what it feels like to find someone you love so deeply and to know that person wants to spend their life by your side only to have them taken from you like that. This has to be the worst thing that can happen to someone, and it happened to Ryan Casey. He had a right to say what he wanted – that’s the point of victim impact statements. No journalist, I would argue, had the right to take his voice away.
Moving back to the present: when a man like the suspect in the stabbing case who was served with a deportation order in 2003 manages to not only stay in Ireland but is granted Irish citizenship and – according to The Sunday Independent – never works a day in his life in this country, are the people – and indeed us in the media – not entitled to ask questions?
It seems that many who sit comfortably in positions of power and influence in this country simply believe that we are not.
Freedom of speech is a pillar of democracy because it enables humans to hash out our many differences without relying on other less peaceful means to make our minds known – read even one history book and that much should become clear.
And yet this foundational principle is under serious attack in Ireland: a country, like many others, whose freedom was paid for with the blood of previous generations almost within living memory.
We have a serious problem in Ireland and as you may have guessed it’s not what John McGuirk called “the mythical far-right”, it’s the very real elitist censors who have decided that they do not work for the people, but that the people should simply ‘shut up’ so they can carrying on beating Ireland into the shape they wish her to be.
Yesterday I was interviewed by Polish journalist Wojciech Mucha about the fallout from last Thursday.
Mucha – who told me he used to live in Ireland – asked why it seems there is such great anger among so many Irish people: a people who are renowned for our friendly, gregarious, and welcoming nature.
I think the answer is that many Irish people feel they are being ignored, marginalised, and indeed mocked by those who are supposed to represent their best interests and keep them informed.
As an aspiring journalist, you learn about the good and the great who have forged the way ahead of you. You learn that you are walking in the footsteps of seminal journalists like John Pilger, Seymour Hersh, and Claud Cockburn – whose name I pronounced phonetically during a first year presentation causing my lecturer to lower his head in mortification.
You learn famous phrases like, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”
The following quote is attributed to Stuart Ewen, “The history of public relations is…a history of a battle for what is reality and how people will see and understand reality.”
This writer feels there is a damaging campaign of censorship and control at play in this country which in many cases sees truth as an inconvenience rather than a guiding principle. What started as ‘don’t report misinformation’ has now become ‘don’t report facts’.
I ask you, given the reaction to Gript’s reporting – the contents of which nobody has claimed to be inaccurate- do we have true journalistic freedom in Ireland, or do we have the expectation that journalists will simply engage in what is in some cases is little more than public relations work for those who think they get to decide what information reaches you?