The Irish Times
January 7, 2012 Saturday
An insurrection in print
MEDIA: LUKE GIBBONS reviews Irish Journalism before Independence: More
a Disease than a ProfessionEdited by Kevin Rafter Manchester
University Press, 240pp. £65hb, £14.99pb
IN 1922, at the height of the Civil War, Ernie O Malley was given the
invidious task of executing the editors of the Irish Timesand the
Irish Independent, but fortunately for those concerned, did not carry
out his orders. Some months earlier, republican forces under Rory O
Connor had smashed the printing presses of the Freeman s Journalfor
its vociferous support of the Treaty. Attacks on free speech were of
course decried, but it is a measure of the impact of the press that at
the founding of the state, it had come to rival the Catholic Church as
an influence on Irish society.
It is remarkable that so little attention has been paid to the press
as an institution and this valuable collection of essays on Irish
journalism makes a major contribution to redressing that deficit. Too
often, as the editor Kevin Rafter points out in his introduction, the
press is used merely as an archival source and not as part of the
story in its own right. In two overviews of the rise of the
profession, Mark O Brien and Michael Foley discuss how journalism came
in from the cold or rather, how journalists had to brave the cold as
the new role of reporter forced them to leave the comfort of their
desks. As one reporter noted, this was not without its hazards: during
the Land War, a journalist turning up at an eviction ran the risk of
being mistaken for a bailiff, and being treated accordingly.
One of the rewards of the book is the discussion of several
journalists who, though not household names, were key figures in their
own time. Matthew Potter writes on Frederick Potter of the Skibbereen
Eaglewho, like Sarah Palin, could see Russia from his back window; as
the author points out, local papers carried large swathes of
international news and were not nearly as provincial as they are
today. Female journalists had to fight for recognition and Gillian O
Brien discusses the Tyrone-born Margaret Sullivan who, based in
Chicago, linked the Irish to the Mexican struggle for freedom.
Sullivan s reputation was so incendiary that when Parnell saw her in
the Ladies Gallery of the House of Commons, he expected her to throw a
bomb into the chamber. Martin O Brennan, from Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo,
was another Fenian sympathiser and Andrew McNicholas recounts how his
Connacht Patriotnewspaper in Tuam a malicious Garibaldian rag and the
Irish Newsin London ran foul of both church and state, forcing him
also to emigrate to Chicago.
That the press constituted an insurrection in print is highlighted in
ML Brillman s discussion of Daniel O Connell, Young Ireland and the
Nation, and is evident in the fact that the Land War and Parnellite
period gave rise to 31 newspapers, of which 20 were nationalist. Paul
Rouse looks at the role of Michael Cusack s the Celtic Times, and the
IRB-run the Gael, in establishing an extensive nationwide profile for
the GAA within a few years of its founding.
All roads, however, did not lead to Croke Park or the GPO. Maurice
Walsh writes about the London Timesleader-writer, James Woulfe
Flanagan, scourge of the Land League and author of the notorious
Parnellism and Crime series, who lived long enough to work at the
Timeswith the young Graham Greene. Peter Murtagh relates the story of
the Dublin-born WH Russell, whose vivid report of the disastrous
Charge of the Light Brigade, and evocation of the thin red line , made
him the most famous journalist of his generation.
Kevin Rafter traces how another Dublin-born foreign correspondent, EJ
Dillon, used his mastery of disguise and 26 languages to cover events
in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe for the Daily Telegraph, exposing the
first wave of Turkish massacres in Armenia. By contrast, the widely
travelled journalist Francis McCullagh put in a good word for Turkish
culture, comparing the conviviality of the coffee-house to an Irish
pub. As John Horgan notes, this crossing of cultures did not go down
well with a Moorish chief, Kaid Gilhooley, who, notwithstanding his
Irish name, expelled the journalist from Agadir for a gift of dodgy
Irish whisky (McCullagh thought that, as a Muslim, the chief would not
sample it). If Margaret Sullivan encouraged Mexican radicalism,
McCullagh deplored it, and his later reporting of Red Mexico ,
revolutionary Russia and the Spanish Civil War relapsed into a zealous
Catholic conservatism.
IN A FASCINATING discussion of Irish language journalism, Regina Uí
Chollatáin shows how the literary aim of writing good Irish with a
view to reviving the language, clashed with the need to write good
journalism which just happened to be in Irish, and which risked, as An
Claidheamh Soluis put it, degenerating into a mere patois . At the
other end of the spectrum, Ciara Meehan examines in detail how Arthur
Griffith placed his prodigious energies at the service of the Sinn
Féin movement, but such was his professional standing that he headed a
list of the best known journalists in the city. Felix Larkin analyses
the manner in which Griffith s initial strained relationship to the
Freeman s Journalaltered as, under its new proprietor, Martin
Fitzgerald, it threw its weight behind him in support of the Treaty.
The role of the press as peacemaker in the run up to the Treaty is
charted by Ian Kenneally, but it was precisely this productive role
that came to grief during the Civil War, leading to the ransacking of
the newspaper s offices by republican forces.
The Freeman s Journaloffices were the location for the Aeolus episode
in Ulysses and Terence Killeen notes how Joyce s meticulous recall of
his visits to the office was put to good use in the chapter. Unlike
the Irish language revival, Joyce had little difficulty distinguishing
between literary language and journalism, but in Ulysses he paid the
press the ultimate compliment by modelling the epic structure of the
novel on the lines of a newspaper though, admittedly, with a longer
shelf-life. In this collection, newspapers also acquire a new
historical importance, long after their sell-by date is gone.
Luke Gibbons is professor of Irish Literary and Cultural Studies at
NUI (Maynooth)