The following is a quote from Hugh Linehan, Duty Editor of the Irish Times, in a piece he wrote yesterday examining why the Irish Media has been so reticent (his word) to report on gender (by which he means transgender) issues:
“The truth may be simpler and more uncomfortable. Irish journalism, like Irish society, is small. The circles are tight. The cost of stepping on the wrong third rail – socially, professionally, reputationally – is high. Better, perhaps, to look away.”
Hugh was responding to a blog post by psychotherapist (and occasional Gript contributor) Stella O’Malley, in which O’Malley set out the slow, quiet process by which she had, in her own words, been “cancelled” by the Irish media after she started raising her substantial and professional concern about how young children and teenagers with gender dysphoria were being treated in Ireland and the UK, and about what we might imperfectly call the “transgender agenda” more widely.
In the quote above, Linehan essentially admits that O’Malley is right: She probably was “quiet cancelled”, and almost certainly because Irish journalists did not want to “step on the third rail” because of the high costs of so doing.
Which poses a question that Linehan doesn’t really answer or even acknowledge: the most important question of all. If he can identify the problem, can he not also identify those responsible for the toxic culture that creates it? Who are these people, Hugh, who impose the “high cost” of stepping on the wrong “third rail”?
To acknowledge the problem is to acknowledge a basic fact that I have been writing about for years: The culture of fear in Irish journalism. This sense of fear presents itself as a kind of self-imposed overton window. There is an implicit understanding in the Irish media of the kind of things a respectable journalist may, and may not do. You see it most prominently in the differential treatment of domestic and foreign politicians: The way the Irish press pack treated Boris Johnson when he came to town, for example, with teeth bared, hackles raised, and probing questions at the ready. Compared to how they treat Micheál Martin. Some people get polite deference, others get the full Jeremy Paxman experience.
Hugh did not diagnose the reason for this in his piece, other than to acknowledge that the situation exists. I hope I may therefore be forgiven for attempting a diagnosis: It is that Irish journalists have an entirely warped notion of the purpose of journalism.
If you see Journalism as firstly and foremostly about holding power to account, then Irish journalism is not for you. Irish journalism is about something different: It is essentially a patriotic exercise, connected inherently to the history and independence of the state. The purpose of Irish journalism is – and many journalists will tell you this openly without realising what they are saying – to maintain and defend confidence in Irish democracy. The inherent understanding behind Irish journalism is that the Irish state is an Irish achievement. That it is something to be proud of, something uniquely ours, and something almost uniquely benign.
The threats to that state, by contrast? Those are the things that the journalist monitors. The idea that the power of the Irish state might ever threaten the Irish people is so absurd to the Irish journalist that it is never even considered. This is a historical artefact.
In the UK, for example, or in France, or in the USA, or in Germany, the historic memory is of a state that is not always benign. The UK state quartered people for treason, the Americans enforced slavery, the French beheaded hundreds of thousands and, out of politeness, we need not mention what the Germans did.
In Ireland, the state has ever been largely benign. Hopeless at times, and incompetent. But largely benign. And those instances where it did fail miserably can usually be blamed on somebody else: The Church, for example. Or individuals.
This therefore implies that the Irish governing class is also largely benign. Not like in other countries, either: The British and French once had a corrupt and capricious aristocracy. The Americans had their billionaire barons and villains, personified in the current era by Mr. Musk. Ireland just has its nice class of academics and lawyers and dance-hall operators, muddling their way through a complicated world where the problems are created by external actors.
And so, the trend emerges: Brexit was done to us by the evil British. The current trade war is Donald Trump’s fault. Even part of the current hysteria over the Israelis can be explained by the fear in some quarters that the pernicious Zionists might punish this state economically for its superior moral fiber. In the worldview of Irish journalism, this is a country that has bad things done to it, not a country that does bad things.
And so the ever-present question in Irish journalism is not “what is happening”? It is, and likely ever shall be, “whose side are you on?”.
This section of Linehan’s piece is relevant:
There is a commonly heard view that to even enter this debate is to engage in a “toxic” discourse imported from Britain and the US – best avoided in a mature, progressive society. But this is an odd position, especially in a media culture that otherwise shows little hesitation in following every twist and turn of UK and US affairs, from the post-Brexit travails of the Conservative party to the power struggles within the Trump White House.
Again, Linehan describes the effect of the problem without acknowledging the reason for it. Look at the words he uses (his tongue perhaps slightly in cheek) to describe Ireland: “A mature, progressive society”.
What he doesn’t acknowledge is the other point: Ireland is not only a “follower” of every twist and turn of UK and US affairs: It is an actively partisan follower. That is why our Taoiseach called Donald Trump a “gowl” when he thought the Orange Man was safely out of office forever. It is why our national rhetoric over Brexit darkly warned of a “return to violence” without ever specifying who would start the fighting. We are hardly neutral observers of the culture wars over Palestine, or Donald Trump’s deportations.
In the world of Irish journalism the Irish state is a beacon and a torch. Its institutions are meritorious. Its leaders basically well intentioned. This state is the “goodie”. The “baddies” are those who question it.
It never appears to strike them that the purpose of journalism is to be the baddie. The questioner. The awkward and annoying dissenter. The person who stands athwart the power of the state saying “stop”.
And thus all of Irish journalism’s villains have the same quality: They are all threats to a “mature and progressive” Irish state. Either by asking awkward questions, like JK Rowling, or pursuing policies a progressive would deplore, like Donald Trump, or by embarrassing the Irish state globally, like Conor McGregor, or threatening internal stability, like the hated “far right”.
Irish journalists live in mortal fear of that one question: Whose side are you on?
It is also why they are perfectly comfortable taking massive wedges of cash from the state. It is why they see no conflict of interest. They are not taking money in truth to adopt the positions they do. They would adopt those positions anyway.
It is the ethos that is rotten. Not the individuals.
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