‘My Goodness, McGuinness’

LONG-TIME republican media watchers know there are those journalists and news media outlets who will acknowledge and recognise the ability of Sinn Féin to reset the political thermostat in Irish politics — and there are those who hate the party for it.
The full spectrum of Irish media, from fair comment to vile begrudging, has been on display after the ratification by the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle of Martin McGuinness to contest the 27th October Presidential election.
Sinn Féin’s ability to jump the tracks and alter how Irish politics is wired has happened many times but it is not every day you get an ‘Oh, wow!’ moment in Irish politics — this is one of them.
For Henry McDonald in The Guardian it is merely a “move” but for the Daily Mail it’s a “sensational turn” and on the Irish Independent front page on Saturday 17th September it “significantly raises the stakes” with an editorial headline proclaiming “Sinn Féin transforms race for the Áras”.
The Belfast daily and unionist News Letter said it’s “the most audacious act since IRA prisoner Bobby Sands stood as an MP”, a theme repeated in the same day’s Daily Express. The Irish Daily Star thought the decision was a “dramatic move” which had “stunned Irish politics”.
“My Goodness McGuinness” was the Sun page 2 headline and, in an editorial that describes McGuinness as a “political heavyweight”, predicts that “the Establishment parties now have a fight on their hands”.
An Examiner editorial on 17th September made the bizarre protest that Sinn Féin “could not find someone born in the Republic” to become President. (Obviously the Examiner isn’t aware of Eamon de Valera being born in the USA or Mary McAleese born in Belfast.)
Some journalists like to try and prompt others to take up their agenda, so The Irish Times tells us on 17th September that “Martin McGuinness will be questioned time and time again about his IRA history”, passing the ball neatly to Fintan O’Toole who in a column on Tuesday 20th September accused McGuinness of breaching the Geneva Convention. But wasn’t it ‘Her Majesty’s Government’ found guilty of torture by the European Court of Human Rights in the 1970s?
‘Fintanland’ doesn’t have the Special Powers Acts, internment without trial, non-jury courts and shoot to kill campaigns by state or state-sponsored  death squads orchestrated from British Army HQ  or Whitehall.
“Provo to President?” was the headline of David McKittrick’s Independent on Sunday article where he concludes the decision “underlines republicanism’s rise as a political force”.
The paper most caught off balance by the Sinn Féin announcement was the Sunday Independent, having invested in a Millward Brown opinion poll where McGuinness was not on the sample ballot paper.
There was still room for Eamon Delaney’s faint praise, seemingly complimenting Sinn Féin, while actually knocking the party. Celia Larkin tells readers that Mícheál Martin is in trouble and that “Sinn Féin is whipping his ass”. Sinn Féin had, according to Larkin, made “a very clever move . . . a “masterstroke in cross-border manoeuvring”.
Suzanne Breen got two pages in the Mail on Sunday, opening with two inside pages headlined “A cold killer or the poet of peace?”, complete with strap that “McGuinness throws a (metaphorical) grenade into the Áras race”. The Mail claims that Breen is “the writer who knows him best” (really?!!).
In the Sunday Business Post, Pat Leahy wrote that Sinn Féin “changed profoundly the nature of the election” and “transformed the race”.
As An Phoblacht goes to print, there has been a significant shift in the media coverage as opinion columnists focus on McGuinness. We already mentioned Fintan O’Toole who has moved onto radio talk shows to peddle his ‘war crimes’ diatribe but, significantly, omitting the British Government, military and the royal family from his scenario. Olivia O’Leary used her Drivetime RTÉ Radio diary to attack McGuinness too. (Check out the Newstalk radio podcast of Eamon Dunphy’s interview on Damien Kiberd’s Lunchtime show on Wednesday 21st September as an antidote.)
Finally, one issue stands out in the media coverage: how the three ‘red tops’ (Mirror, Star and Sun) first reported the Sinn Féin announcement. Their reports came with quotes from Adams and McGuinness that constituted the vast bulk of their articles. Not so in the supposedly ‘quality’ papers and other news media, many of whom opted for opinion, interpretation and invective first, news reporting a distant second.