10 September 1998 Edition
Editor's desk
In Kilkeel, Co Down last month there was what might be called a clash of cultures. An Irish language class was underway in a local community centre when in came a group of loyalist protestors determined to disrupt the class. They played Lambeg drums as loudly as they could, eventually forcing the class to break up.
As the pupils left a very annoyed teacher said, ``And I thought this was a cross community event.''
``It is,'' said one Gaelic scholar, pointing to the loyalists, ``that's one cross community.''
On the subject of the media. Irish tycoon Tony O'Reilly gave a rare interview to the autumn issue of the British Journalism Review. In it he talked about his papers' coverage of Irish politics.
``Those who don't believe in some democratic solution to the problems can't write for us,'' he said. You could have a good argument with Tony about democracy in Ireland, but that's for another day. He went on to say: ``We publish writers who are very much in line with my own intellectual views on the way the Anglo-Irish drama, which has been around 400 years, can finally be played out.''
Besides revealing that you could also have a good argument with Tony about history his comment is the closest we've ever been to O'Reilly admitting that his views mirror those of his rabidly anti-republican papers. After all, his writers include Ruth Dudley Edwards, Eilis O'Hanlon, John A Murphy, Shane Ross, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Jonathon Philbin Bowman and on and on.
All this would be so much fluff except that O'Reilly controls 66% of Irish newspapers by readership and 95% of the Sunday papers.
What could have happened to Paddy Mayhem ... sorry, Lord Mayhew, since he left the Six Counties. In the debate in the House of Lords on the new repressive laws he had this to say:
``We are being invited to make dangerous law, which is therefore bad law, and we are being denied the opportunity to make good law''.
Has he gone native?
As the pupils left a very annoyed teacher said, ``And I thought this was a cross community event.''
``It is,'' said one Gaelic scholar, pointing to the loyalists, ``that's one cross community.''
On the subject of the media. Irish tycoon Tony O'Reilly gave a rare interview to the autumn issue of the British Journalism Review. In it he talked about his papers' coverage of Irish politics.
``Those who don't believe in some democratic solution to the problems can't write for us,'' he said. You could have a good argument with Tony about democracy in Ireland, but that's for another day. He went on to say: ``We publish writers who are very much in line with my own intellectual views on the way the Anglo-Irish drama, which has been around 400 years, can finally be played out.''
Besides revealing that you could also have a good argument with Tony about history his comment is the closest we've ever been to O'Reilly admitting that his views mirror those of his rabidly anti-republican papers. After all, his writers include Ruth Dudley Edwards, Eilis O'Hanlon, John A Murphy, Shane Ross, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Jonathon Philbin Bowman and on and on.
All this would be so much fluff except that O'Reilly controls 66% of Irish newspapers by readership and 95% of the Sunday papers.
What could have happened to Paddy Mayhem ... sorry, Lord Mayhew, since he left the Six Counties. In the debate in the House of Lords on the new repressive laws he had this to say:
``We are being invited to make dangerous law, which is therefore bad law, and we are being denied the opportunity to make good law''.
Has he gone native?