‘Newspapers and paying the piper’ by Donal Kennedy

The late Dr Brian Inglis who had a glittering career in journalism, radio and TV, cut  his journalistic teeth with the Irish Times. He earned his PhD with a thesis on Irish newspapers in the 19th Century and revealed that some were secretly subsidised by the British administration in Dublin Castle.

It appears that they were not sufficiently popular with readers to survive otherwise and/or that Ireland under British rule was not wealthy enough to keep them afloat with advertisements. It is not sufficiently appreciated that in the 19th Century millions died without  their loss being individually recorded in any publication.

For some years I’ve wondered whether friends and neighbours east of the Irish Sea kept some papers published in Ireland afloat, but I did not expect anything more substantial than Editorial policy to strengthen that suspicion. I then read that although the circulation of the Daily Telegraph, its last editor, Geraldine Kennedy, was paid more than that of the London paper.

It’s not as if she ever consciously sought to discomfit any Government in London. For example, she ran a series of despatches from Patrick Bury in Afghanistan when he was serving with the British Army as an Officer there. It appears he is an Irish citizen, who under the Constitution enacted by his fellow citizens must  “give fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the state.”   Thus he appears a dodgy customer. Besides he is, and will be forever, bound by Britain’s Official Secrets Act – a very stringent one, infringement of which attracts stiff penalties. So everything he published must have been vetted and approved by his employers. (Imagine Goldman Sachs, or Heinz Corporation, Mickey Mouse, or even the Irish Times, publishing anything by an employee putting them in a bad light? Think again, matey.)

So was the Irish Times paying Patrick Bury, or the Imperial War Office paying the Irish Times from its Public Relations fund? Some investigative journalism would not go amiss.

There might even be  a PhD in it.

P.S.  I see that Patrick Bury has been resurrected from obscurity to put in a good word for the Parachute Regiment’s work in Derry. Or in deference to his masters, “Londonderry.”