Connect Eddie HoltThe retired American diplomat George Dempsey claims that elements of the Irish media share responsibility for the attacks on the US on September 11th, 2001. He cites, in particular, this newspaper and RTÉ for what he describes as "witless pandering to Arab irrationality and intransigence". In terms of irrationality and intransigence, Dempsey has few equals.
"Let us be clear about this," he writes. "The Irish media, in general, bear their share of the responsibility for what happened in the US. For far too long in this country \ there has been a prevailing view, which denigrates and condemns and even vilifies American foreign policy."
Let us be clear about this: such denigration, condemnation and vilification of Irish media is nasty.
There are many reasons to criticise our media. The market, the law, excessive "celebrity" trash, concentration of ownership, aping British tabloids, appeals to prurience, growing PR interference in journalism and all the usual forces which beset Western media at the start of the 21st century, cause problems. But the charge that Irish media are infested by lefties is ludicrous.
Dempsey claims this State's media has been dominated by "an invasion of the body-snatchers from a planet peopled by time-warped 1960s radicals and Marxist revisionist historians". Although this is a common line, it's daft. Who are the radical and Marxist editors and journalists? Which publications or programmes do they edit? Why is such guff repeated so regularly? Consider this newspaper. In Mark Steyn, Kevin Myers and John Waters, for instance, the American-led attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq have consistent and often belligerent defenders. Indeed, the aggression of some of their language - particularly that of Steyn and Myers - echoes that of Dempsey and even of Rush Limbaugh, the archetypal voice of radio's ranting right in the US.
Earlier this week Steyn, in what was presumably an attempt to minimise the horror of the Abu Ghraib photographs, wrote: "Making a homo-erotic pyramid of young Iraqi men naked with their bottoms in the air is not my idea of a good time." That's hilarious, Mr Steyn . . . so witty and wonderfully dismissive of an outrage so appalling it will cost more US and Iraqi lives.
Last month, a concise letter from Paul Carroll of Clane, Co Kildare, was published in this paper. "I believe you owe your readers an explanation of why you see the need to publish Mr Steyn's incredibly offensive material, with its clear endorsement of violence and its racist stereotypes of Arabs," he wrote. It's unlikely that Mr Carroll is a lone voice.
Back in April of last year, Kevin Myers attacked people he characterised as "Not In My Names" or NIMNs, for short. "So where are you all now, you Not In My Names?" he asked. "Freedom is spreading across Iraq and what have you NIMNs to say? Will you write contrite letters to this newspaper admitting that you were wrong and that you apologise?" Addressing "smug, priggish, sanctimonious NIMNs" as "little rats", Myers began one sentence: "Let me tell you, little rats of NIMN . . . " In addition to being 'little rats', NIMNs were variously "pathetic" or "grotesque buffoons" or even "the harlots of morality" (whatever they might be!). The aggression of the language suggested a suspiciously Limbaugh-like animosity.
Anyway, "NIMNs", wrote Myers, simultaneously echoing and disproving George Dempsey's line, infested the Irish media in "extraordinary numbers". John Waters, who wrote in March of last year that "Bush and Blair \ doing \ right thing" argued in July about "the post-Sixties flower-powerism dominating the British media and indeed our own".
Neither the British nor Irish media are so dominated. In fact, conservative proprietors, accountants and advertisers dominate almost all Western media and politicians control what is in state ownership. Editors know as much. Yet charges of radicalism persist: there just must be reds or unreconstructed 1960s flower-power people under the newsprint and in front of the camera.
RTÉ, despite Dempsey's claims, is certainly no hotbed of revolutionary politics. The idea is laughable. So, with this newspaper and RTÉ not remotely according with his witless characterising of them, what's left? The Examiner titles, Today FM or Ireland's Own do not support Osama Bin Laden. Nor does Independent News and Media, by far the largest media group in the country.
Indeed in January of this year, Eoghan Harris, writing in the Sunday Independent, claimed "many ordinary Irish people believe privately George W Bush is a great president". That's unlikely. They didn't then and they don't now. (That "many" is ambiguous, of course, but in terms of a proportion of the population, only a small number could conceivably believe that.) Generally there is a valid conservative point of view as there is generally a valid liberal one. However, the shrillness of insult-laden conservative voices has been alarming in the last year or so. Screaming language is nearly always a giveaway, of course. George Dempsey's is merely the most hysterical and insulting.