Conor Kenny
Staff Writer
“I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.”
As I was casually surfing the recent articles of this website last night, the name of a familiar foe caught my eye in the sluggish RSS feed that runs up the right channel of the homepage. The tweet bore the message that, five hours previously, the Student Union council had voted to overturn the ban on the Daily Mail being sold on campus, which had been in effect for two and a half months. I have deliberately avoided returning to this subject until now, largely out of respect for the gravity of the disaster that occurred back in December, but also because I had a rather knowing inkling that this issue would rear it’s ugly head again of its own accord. For those of you who are unaware, the paper put in jeopardy the progress of a search for the late Caolan Mulrooney in Cork, a UCC student who had been missing for several days. Marisa Lynch fabricated a story of revolting proportions which reported that Caolan’s body had been fished out of the River Lee. In reality, nothing of the sort had occurred, provoking colossal fury nationwide in the aftermath of an article that you can read here.
I’m not writing this piece to stir up another typhoon against the paper itself, or even to attempt to somehow overturn the ban. Both things are remarkably unlikely, and at any rate, probably quite unnecessary at this stage too. The reaction against the initial ban was so rancorously received by the media in the country, coinciding with the withdrawal of an invitation to Nick Griffin to speak at the college, that the SU will probably want to handle their PR strategy in a more effective way this year. Who can blame them? However, this occurrence brings up an issue broader than the sale of The Daily Mail itself, one concerning freedom of speech. It may well be an unpopular view, but I’m steadfastly against the concept of unlimited freedom of speech. I believe that my freedom to shout “fire” in a crowded room is restricted by the freedom of other people not to be crushed to death in the ensuing chaos. The same logic limits my freedom to swing my fist within the close proximity of another person’s jaw. You are, of course, entitled to disagree with this view, but please don’t resort to the banal judgment that to have this outlook is to be fascistic in itself.
For far too long now, The Daily Mail has been allowed to conduct itself with astonishing inimicality in both Britain and Ireland, remaining largely unpunished in the process. The list of “exposés” it has fabricated over the years are endless, with Marisa Lynch simply another name in the long list of journalists who have sensationalized stories for the sake of fast-food reporting. It’s a sorry state of affairs indeed that a journalist of that ilk is allowed to continue in her profession, while the indefatigable Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times was killed yesterday while trying to report on the state of violence in Syria. Ms. Colvin was the definition of a brave and talented reporter, the kind of which a tabloid like The Mail could only dream of employing.
If giving the paper a blood nose back in December was an act undertaken by fascists, then I for one have never been prouder to be represented by Nazis. For a rag like that to enjoy impunity from the students of this country would have been a travesty in itself, and I applaud the SU for the admirable show of solidarity they displayed in the aftermath of the disaster. I probably can’t overturn their new decision by writing this, as much as I’d like to ask them to reconsider it, but I can implore everyone reading this to entirely ignore the temptation to buy the Mail in campus shops, or anywhere else for that matter. Such an act may seem like a small thing in isolation, but it is worth pointing out that The Sun is barely even sold on Merseyside anymore after the false reporting of the Hillsborough disaster. If you’ll forgive the tired old cliché, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Perhaps one day a time will come when tabloids, and all those who write for them, are redundant.
