Paul KeenanDear Editor, More than any other event in Ireland in recent memory, the story of the Tuam mother and baby home demonstrates so clearly the bias against the Church at the heart of the modern secular media.
From a story made possible by already existing records – as confirmed by Dr Lindsey Earner-Byrne in your paper (‘Tuam did not happen in a vacuum’ IC 12/6/14) – national and international media entered into a veritable feeding frenzy on the back of initial yet unfounded reports of 796 infant corpses ‘cast’ into a septic tank (one outlet preferred ‘sewer’), the scenario offering an irresistible level of salaciousness for journalists everywhere as a ‘revelation’ on the ‘dark heart of Ireland’, with the added inducement of the Church sitting at the centre of the story.
All too quickly those sensationalist elements of the story (tragic and horrendous as it stands) have dissipated in the cold light of objective examination, yet this pulling up of the real truth has not been matched by an equal measure of coverage among journalists who would have us believe that they seek truth though the heavens fall.
Far from revealing the Bon Secours nuns of Tuam as the villains of the piece, the frenzied, unchecked and partisan coverage across the Fourth Estate served instead to place journalists themselves into the role, and gives pause to wonder what other stories offered to us as our daily ‘news’ have been fact-checked to raise them above the level of prurient gossip.
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ Who will guard the guards themselves?
Yours etc.,
Brian O’Carroll,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.