An Interview with Raymond Deane
Continuing our interview with Raymond Deane – former Chairperson of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
(RD – Raymond Deane, MC – Miriam Cotton, MediaBite)
MC: What do you think about the Irish media coverage of the Palestinian issue – what or who are offering either the best or the worst of it and would you see Indymedia as a good source – it’s undeniably a great phenomenon – vital for putting facts and information in the public domain which otherwise might not see the light of day?
RD: In this country it’s easy to single out the worst: Independent Newspapers. Some people say that we in the IPSC are forever targeting the Irish Times and RTE, and ignoring the real mass media, and there’s some truth in this. My rationale, perhaps self-seeking because I simply don’t want to read the Irish Independent or the Sunday Independent, is that everybody knows that these are just populist right-wing rags, everybody knows that people like Eoghan Harris and Kevin Myers and Ruth Dudley Edwards are contrarian crackpots. These papers don’t claim to be newspapers of record whereas the Irish Times does make that claim, and it is the one that is generally cited if people outside Ireland are ever bothered to cite the Irish media. From that point of view, it is important therefore to deal in a separate way and in a concentrated way with the Irish Times.
Continue reading Will Palestine always be the issue? – Part 2