Sir, - I know August is the silly season for news reporting but I fail to see how a story that includes personal anecdotes about access by your reporter to Mr Haughey's yacht, along with a picture of Mr Haughey doing the honours at the Dingle regatta merits front page treatment (The Irish Times, August 21st), while World Youth Day, with 2 million young people celebrating with Pope John Paul II, is relegated to page 5 under "Home News"? Did some sub-editor mix up the position of the stories?
While both reports portray happy old men, albeit not in the best of health, making the most of the adulation of fans, surely the Pope merited front-page coverage if only for the sheer numbers he attracted? World Youth Day was the largest spiritual gathering of Christians ever seen in Europe. What makes for news these days? Numbers don't seem to matter, nor making history, nor that which is essentially good news. It seems that tragedy, scandal and the whiff of scandal are the order of the day. - Yours, etc.,
David Rose, Stamullen, Co Meath.