Sir, – I believe it timely to applaud your political correspondent, Stephen Collins, for his objective and reasoned stance with respect to the role of the media in the prevailing denigration of politics and politicians reflected in his two Opinion & Analysis pieces ("State commemoration of 1916 has been a success", August 13th; "Ireland not immune to virus that spawned Trump's success", August 6th).
He quotes research in both the United States and Ireland to demonstrate that a significant proportion of the electorate (25 per cent to 40 per cent ) “have a severely distorted view of how government and politics are supposed to work”, and he goes on to assert “that the media must take some responsibility for this ignorance.” How true.
In many parts of our media, flailing politicians, with little objective analysis or research, has become something of a sport. The principal loser in all of this is our democratic process. This practice has been a growing trend internationally for some years.
Robert Putnam edited Democracies in Flux, the Evolution of Capital in Contemporary Society in 2004, in which one of the findings was "Mounting discontent with political institutions is another common, though not universal, feature of our western democracies; one way of describing this trend is from a social-capital intensive politics to a media-intensive professionalised politics."
Given this developing trend, it is apparent that what is required more than ever from the media in general is a stance that is responsible, that is rational and research-based so that those values we cherish in our democracies are protected.
More recent examples such as Michael Gove’s claim in his successful Brexit campaign that “we don’t need experts” and some of Donald Trump’s more base declarations that seem to have been rewarded in his US presidential primary campaign, in addition to confirming the ignorance of the electorate referred to above, should also serve as a clarion call for those who care about the value of truth in public discourse and the consequent risk to our democratic way of life. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK NOLAN,
Cabinteely, Dublin 18.