Sir, - Eoin Neeson's critical comments on RTE's Civil War programme (The Irish Times, January 23rd) are not only fully justified but reinforce important questions about who controls the content and presentation of supposed documentaries.
Most of the factual "howlers" listed by Neeson are known to the proverbial dogs in the street, yet a number of professional historians took part in the programme without apparent protest. Even more, Professor Garvin gave an interview the same day on Morning Ireland in which he emphasised the lack of substantial research into the Civil War, citing his own undergraduates "who think they know about it when they don't". He went on to pour scorn on the (in my view, politically illiterate) proposition that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael should now come together and forgive and forget their origins: better, he suggested, if they first found out just what it was they were supposed to forgive and forget, a sentiment perhaps equally applicable to much "liberal" opinion on the North today.
But behind this is a more fundamental issue. Bryan Dobson, who, for most viewers, is associated with the presentation of news which viewers should be able to trust as objective, was seen for an hour making statements about the war in a form intended to give viewers the idea that they were both factually correct and essentially unproblematic. Modern historiography is not about non-problematics: it is about the research and presentation of contrasting possibilities and judgements, especially in relation to periods of radical change and shifting paradigms.
Why do reputable historians allow RTE to get away with this type of programme time and time again? What price the approach to history apparently being taught in our schools and universities to judge from the silence of the experts? - Is mise,
Desmond Hogan,
Cuckoo Mount, Schull, Cork.