Madam, - Does anyone else find it strange that a senior government policy adviser and member of the Oireachtas has a flagship Saturday opinion column in The Irish Times? Martin Mansergh is blatantly using his column to promote the image and policies of his party, and most recently his leader (October 11th). So far, so Fianna Fáil.
It seems also that his column is used for flagging policy changes: he questions whether the Government's commitments can be met "within the parameters of existing economic policy" (October 11th). This comes on top of Mark Brennock's soft-focus interview with the Taoiseach (October 4th), in which Bertie described himself as left-of-centre. Tax rises? You read it here first. Drapier (October 11th) thinks so too.
I have always been under the perhaps naïve impression that in a democracy journalists are supposed to question and resist media manipulation by politicians, or at least avoid facilitating it. This should be especially true of an independently-owned broadsheet newspaper. What price media freedom? Even State-owned RTÉ is accepting "sponsorship" from the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times. - Yours, etc.,
CHARLES BAGWELL, Millbrook, Straffan, Co Kildare.
Madam, - I read Senator Martin Mansergh's encomium on the present Taoiseach (Opinion, October 11th) with mounting astonishment. By the end I was writhing with vicarious embarrassment for the writer, and indeed for the object of his praise.
I have read nothing like it since the days of Dr Mansergh's loyal addresses and writings on Mr C.J. Haughey, a literary form which reached its excruciating acme in the senator's introduction to his collection of that Taoiseach's speeches, Spirit of the Nation. Why - in fairness both to the Taoiseach and to its readers - does The Irish Times facilitate this? - Yours, etc.,
HUGO BRADY BROWN, Stratford on Slaney, Co Wicklow.