In today’s Irish Independent newspaper regular columnist Eoghan Harris recounts a forty year old tale that perfectly illustrates the perverse thinking that long ago corrupted the ethical heart of journalism in Ireland. It relates to a clash between a local Irish-speaking community in Galway and the infamous Language Freedom Movement (LFM), a supremacist Anglophone grouping opposed to Hibernophone rights, and Harris’ reporting of the controversy for RTÉ (note that I have corrected the numerous spelling mistakes found in the original opinion piece):
“In June 1969, the Feach team, with Diarmaid as reporter and myself as producer, covered a dispute about the Irish language in Ahascragh, Co Galway, between a branch of the Language Freedom Movement and the local school principal and famous sean-nós singer, the late Seán Mac Donnacha.
Filming the protagonists, we found a spokesperson for the LFM had a slight speech impediment. Normally this might not have mattered much. But Seán Mac Donnacha, who spoke for the Irish language side, was líofa in both languages. So his side was going to come across a lot more clearly than the LFM side.
This should not have bothered us. Regular viewers of TG4 programmes will have noticed that some Irish language producers feel free to fly the green flag regardless. But Diarmaid and myself believed in balance. Although we nearly missed our deadline, we finally found someone in the LFM who could match the screen status of Seán Mac Donnacha.”
In other words Eoghan Harris as a television news producer in 1969 altered the presentation of the news to a form he judged more editorially acceptable. He bolstered the argument of one side in a politically-motivated dispute by setting out to find a better spokesperson than the one they themselves had nominated. And all in the name of “balance”. Fox News how are ya?! More like Harris News!
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Chuala mé é seo go minic ó ollúna agus scoláirí agus iad ag rá go gcaithfidh an scéal a bheith ‘Balanced.’ Níl ciall dá laghad leis sin.
Má tá tú ag scríobh faoi na héifeachtaí uafásacha atá ag éigniú ar pháiste an gá dul ag lorg buntáistí a bhaineann leis freisin ionasic go mbeidh sé ‘balanced’?
Níl an saol ‘balanced.’ Dá mbeadh sé cothrom, ní bheadh gá leis an nuacht.
Ceart ar fad agat anseo.
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True enough. Balance is an ideal to be striven for but not at the expense of sense or reason. There are both sides to the argument but I think Harris and co. strayed too far from reporting the news to managing the news in the choices they made (forgive the response in English due to my rudimentary Gaeilge. I remain, alas, the perpetual learner. Though apparently my critics insist that this linguistic lack nullifies any opinions I may hold on Irish).
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Níl gá le forgiveness!
Tá tú cliste i nGaeilge agus i mBéarla 🙂
Ná bac leo siúd a deireann nach bhfuil sé sin fíor! #meas
Nach bhfuilimid go léir ag foghlaim? #SinAnSaol
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Go raibh maith agat. I try – in both languages 😉 The plan is to improve my Irish with a six-month, weekly oral course during the year. Unfortunately that has to be scheduled around anti-social working hours which is far from easy. Especially with my department understaffed by at least two people and no plans to find replacements. The times we live in. Even blogging is a struggle 😉
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If the dispute had been about something other than language, would it then have been appropriate to find someone who could speak to camera effectively, since not everyone can do this? Given that there are many real grievances over the status of Irish, press bias etc., I really don’t see that it helps to invent bogus ones or inflate minor incidents out of all proportion. That just gives the uninformed the impression that you’re scraping the barrel.
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@Marconatrix, short answer, no. Harris was a TV news producer reporting on a local controversy who decided that the spokesperson for one side in that controversy was not the equal of his opponent. He and a colleague then sought out a stronger spokesperson, one more articulate, to replace the initial representative. In other words he decided to editorialise the news, to change the presentation of the issues at hand to a manner he judged more balanced. There is a world of difference between straightforward reportage and news management. The fact that it was a language issue is irrelevant. The issue is the manner in which Harris and co. altered the culture of journalism in Ireland, a culture that reached its nadir in the news and current affairs dept. of our national public service broadcaster during the 1970s and ’80s.
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You appear to be saying that a particular POV should be ignored if it’s spokesperson is unfortunately inarticulate before the camera. Shouldn’t each position be reported on its own merits, if it has any?
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While many journalists with an ax to grind will employ this little trick, few admit to it. That Harris does so, albeit more than 40 years later, shows he has no regrets and fears no professional backlash. That also means his counterparts, active and retired, likely agree with what he did.
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@CBC, agreed. It’s the journalistic culture that Harris and his ideological clique promoted in the 1970s and ’80s that I protest against. Report the news don’t manage it. This is exactly how Ireland’s news media landed up in the mess it is in now and why it is so despised. Cynicism breeds cynicism.
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The same goes on here in the States. As a former reporter I understand no one can into a story without biases, but a journalist’s job is to ferret out and report the facts to the best of their ability, not make sure one side looks better or worse than the facts indicate.
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Reblogged this on seachranaidhe1.
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