Friday, September 16, 2011

Irish media hostile towards Church, O'Toole admits

One of Ireland's most influential columnists, and a long-time critic of the Catholic Church, has admitted that there is a culture of hostility in the Irish media towards religion.

In an interview with the Irish Catholic, Fintan O'Toole, assistant editor for the Irish Times, said that the media's coverage of religion is “snobbish and dismissive.”  

And he accepted that people are “quite right to be upset about that and critical of the attitude - I think it is there.”

He said that a second problem with the Irish media's coverage of religion is a certain “dumbing down” regarding issues concerning values and morality. Ireland needed, he said “a healthy public arena in which the discussion of ideas in general is respectable.”

O'Toole also admitted that, “it no longer takes any courage to attack the Church.”  He added that he had “a lot of sympathy” with people who feel that religion is badly represented in the Irish media.

“In general, I don't think the complaint is inaccurate.  I think it's a reasonably well-founded complaint that the media in general do not reflect that reality.”  

And he acknowledged that most Irish journalists tended to be less religious than the country as a whole.

He admitted that the Irish Times has not made any conscious efforts to be more reflective of the views of Irish society at large for what he called “cultural” reasons.  

He said that the function of the Irish Times has always been to operate in “an overwhelmingly Catholic society.”

He said, “It's a fair point that, psychologically, the paper is probably still orientated in that way even though the society has changed completely and there is no longer this Catholic monolith to bang your head against.  It no longer takes any courage to attack the Church.”

“What was the Irish Times' agenda is now pretty much mainstream; it's broadly speaking where most of the media is at.”

“I think there's a very valid question to be asked of the paper, which is,  'Okay, you were brave and campaigning from a minority position back then, but is that valid in exactly the same way now' and the answer it is it isn't.”

O’Toole also acknowledged the child abuse issue was being used to “get at Catholicism” and that suggestions that Catholicism is innately linked to child abuse are “complete rubbish.” 

He said the issue “has nothing to do with Catholicism.”

“A lot of people have been trying to use this to get at Catholicism [by saying that] it's fundamentally corrupt and therefore it leads to the abuse of children. This is complete rubbish and it's demonstrably rubbish.  Most child abuse happens within families and there are umpteen cases of Protestant orphanages.”

“It has nothing innately to do with Catholicism, it has to do with power.”