Madam, - Shane Hegarty is right to criticise the Irish media for its over-emphasis on events in the United States and its neglect of news from the wider world (Opinion & Analysis, January 7th).
He contrasts the coverage of a mining accident in West Virgina which killed 11 people with a landslide in Indonesia on the same day which killed an estimated 100 people. Another example from last week was the non-coverage of Israeli jets bombing parts of Beirut in retaliation for attacks on northern Israel from southern Lebanon.
Surely such events are newsworthy. Imagine the RAF invading Irish airspace and bombing, say, Donnybrook, in retaliation for IRA attacks on Belfast launched from Ireland. Thankfully, the internet makes available many high-quality sources of news which take a far wider and more comprehensive view of world affairs than that typically found in the mainstream Irish media. Not least of these is the superlative on-line BBC news coverage of the Middle East. - Yours, etc,
Dr KEVIN LALOR,
Department of Social Sciences,
Dublin Institute of Technology,
Mountjoy Square,
Dublin 1.