You would hardly think from reading the work of Irish historians that media and journalists played such a central role in Irish history. From the mid-1850s onwards, journalists and newspapers were at the heart of historical developments. Positions were fought out in the press and every town had its nationalist and Tory or Conservative newspaper.
Editors and journalists were involved in agitation and politics at every level. Journalists T.P. O'Connor, Justin McCarthy, William O'Brien, James J. O'Kelly and Luke Hayden were all Irish Parliamentary Party MPs. Outside parliament, John Devoy, Joseph Clarke, Michael McDonagh, Edmund O'Donovan, Arthur Griffith, Bulmer Hobson and Patrick Pearse were all journalists or editors. After the Parnell-split the two sides fought for control of the party newspaper. Later, Eamon De Valera understood that the Fianna Fail party would never be a major force without a newspaper and so founded the Irish Press. Given this history it is puzzling that historians have more or less ignored the role of the media as a player, and have been content to use it simply as a source.
While broadcasting has been better served by scholars, the students of 20thcentury Irish Press history have had to turn to anecdotal accounts, memoirs, small collections of essays and such sources as reports from the Competition Authority to fill the gaps.
John Horgan's history of the Irish media since Independence, both north and south of the Border, is a fine and important work. It is astonishing that this is the first scholarly history of the Irish media since Independence to be produced and if for nothing else, that would be a good enough reason to welcome it. There are, however, many other reasons to give this book a warm welcome. It is well-written, well-researched and timely. It is timely because the control that successive governments have exercised over the media could well be challenged, with the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into Irish law. And, it is timely because a regulatory framework for the printed press is likely to be introduced sooner rather than later, and because public service broadcasting is under increasing pressure. Dr Horgan has supplied part of the context within which these issues should be discussed. At the start of this story the media are Irish-owned. That is not necessarily so today. Trinity Mirror, Scottish Radio Holdings, CanWest and Granada all own vast amounts of the Irish media. That is one story that threads through this book, the story of ownership. The other is that of control and the paranoia of successive governments towards the media. The first Irish Government and its Civil War-enemies understood the power of the press, and so it was either censored or its printing plants burnt down. But peace only led to a cold war between the media and successive governments. Ever since, there has been a struggle between Government and the media which has had consequences for the sort of journalism we have today. Some of the stories from the early days of the State are mind-boggling. All copies of the Daily Mail were seized for four consecutive days because the army was unhappy with its tone. The Government's own director of publicity recommended that the Irish correspondent of the Morn- ing Post be either imprisoned or deported for a similar offence.
The Censorship of Publications Act - the result of a report from the wonderfully named Committee on Evil Literature - specifically banned information about contraception. This was used to proscribe those newspapers the government did not approve of, the Communist Daily Worker, for instance, but not the New Statesman or the Spectator, presumably because their middle-class readers were impervious to the temptations contained in such advertising. De Valera never hesitated in phoning the Irish Press every night and changing the copy. Not even the Irish Press's own political correspondent was safe. Joe Dennigan refused to give a military tribunal the name of an anonymous informant, quoted in an article on government policy towards illegal organisations. He was found guilty of contempt and imprisoned. And so it went on. The 1937 Constitution gave the press freedom with one hand and circumscribed it hugely with the other. War-time censorship was carried out with an enthusiasm beyond what many thought necessary.
Broadcasting, of course, has had the most controversial relationship with the Government. One RTE authority was sacked, licence fees were used to keep RTE in its place and, of course, there was the censorship of Section 31. This later measure was repealed last month, with very little notice. The relationship between Government and broadcasting has, of course, become the stuff of tribunals in recent months. This is an uneven chronology. Some areas are glossed over, or not covered at all. Other areas are given tremendous detail. Every reader will have his or her own views as to what should have been included. Dr Horgan has however, indicated the way media-history should develop. The history of the media did not take place in isolation. Journalists do not and have never been simply neutral chroniclers of events. They and their newspapers, radio stations and TV stations are important players.
Given Dr Horgan's biography of Sean Lemass, it is of little surprise that this interplay between major political events and the media is seen at its most fascinating when he looks at the Irish Press and Fianna Fail. In the early 1950s when Lemass was challenging Fianna Fail's economic orthodoxy, he did so with the aid of the Irish Press, which subtly endorsed his side of the arguments about the weakness of Irish industry, and so changed both Fianna Fail and Irish society. Lemass, as former managing director of the Irish Press, understood the potential of the media better than most. This book will become the standard work for some years, not just as a work of reference, but also as an agenda for researchers and students. As an aid to this a detailed and important bibliography is included, which is a major resource in itself.
Michael Foley is a senior lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a former Media Correspondent of The Irish Times