Man Bites Dogma - The Press and the Amendment Campaign

Any discussion of the recent Amendment campaign in the media should perhaps begin by acknowledging that it represents something of an achievement that the debate is being conducted in the media in the first place. It is seldom realized that one of the main objectives behind the 1929 Censorship of Publications Act was to prohibit not only literature which it considered "in its general tendency indecent or obscene" but also to curtail discussion on questions relating, in the words of the Act, to "the unnatural prevention of conception or the procurement of abortion or miscarriage or the use of any method, treatment, or appliance for the purpose of such prevention or miscarriage". The suppression of debate on these issues was considered so important that a separate section was introduced, taking the matter out of the hands of the Censorship Board and transferring it to the police. Silence became a more effective means of controlling ideas than any form of argument or debate. Luke Gibbons writes more.

This background of censorship and silence has important implications for the present Amendment campaign as it tends to suggest that the very willingness to open up discussion and devote column space to the issue is itself an indication of an enlightened and a considered approach to the topic. This should cast some doubt over the Pro-Amendment claim, made in relation to the findings of its nationwide survey announced in early February, "that the more people understood the issues the more they were supporting the Amendment campaign" (Irish Independent 9th Feb). If this were true one would expect national papers sympathetic to the amendment to be to the forefront in carrying news and features about the campaign to the public. An analysis of the extent of press coverage, however, will reveal that the precise opposite is the case: the amount of space devoted to the Amendment in the Irish Times, the Irish Press and the Irish Independent would seem to indicate that in accordance as a paper is critical of the proposed referendum, it tends to open up its columns to news and discussion:

Irish Times
2603.75 column inches

Irish Press
1389.25 column inches

Irish Independent 1087 column inches

Indeed the discrepancy in coverage between two of the papers in particular - the Irish Times and the Irish Independent - is so marked that one is tempted to suggest that the ProAmendment case thrives on the suppression or elimination of discussion. This is important to bear in mind as a corrective to the misleading statement made by the Minister for Justice, Mr Noonan, in the Dail regarding media coverage of the campaign. Though he concedes that "there can be no case for stifling ... discussion on any programme", he goes on to state that "on the other hand, I have to say that media coverage of this issue has on the whole been unbalanced in favour of the anti-amendment case" (Irish Times February 10). The fact that papers critical of the Amendment devote more space to the issue than those on the Pro-Amendment side, seems to be equated in this statement with a lack of balance on their part. I would suggest that the opposite is the case it is precisely the attempt to stifle debate, to foreclose public discussion and argument which constitutes the real lack of balance and the most dangerous threat to a public anxious to acquire information on matters which directly concern them. In this respect, Fr Fergal O'Connor's recent assessment of the overall direction taken by the campaign would seem to be nearer the mark:

"When all the words have flowed, and the ink is dry, it is highly probable that more people will favour abortion than did before the debate, and that public opinion will have shifted somewhat towards accepting abortion as part of our medical services."

(Irish Times February 24)

What he is saying, in effect, is that even to open debate on such a closed topic, to allow people choice on the matter, is in fact to break the old mould of unquestioning obedience and silence in the face of authority.

That a suspicion of rational argument and sustained debate runs deep in pro-Amendment quarters will become clear if we look at the coverage of the campaign in the national daily most sympathetic to the pro-Amendment case, the Irish Independent. Writing in The Bell in the mid 1940s, Donat O'Donnell (alias the young Conor Cruise O'Brien) noted that the Irish Independent conducted its campaigns, particularly against Fianna Fail in the 1932 general election, not through analysis or argument but rather through assertion, allegation and guilt through association.

Little has changed, it would seem, in the intervening half-century, if the Independent's coverage of the AntiAmendment position is anything to go by. On Friday February 4 half of its entire coverage consisted in the following dramatic revelations:
'Campaign' HQ base revealed
THE address of the headquarters of the Anti-Amendment Campaign - the group opposed to Constitutional change which will
effectively prevent abortion clinics opening in Ireland was revealed in the Dail yesterday.

The organisation, which has been lobbying support among the various professions, is based in the Eccles Street building of the
Well - Woman Centre the abortion referral agency which actively campaigns for the introduction of abortion in Ireland.
Up to now, the address was not disclosed at AntiAmendment Campaign news conferences held at regular intervals in recent months, at which only telephone numbers were released.

The new information was given in the Dail yesterday when Fine Gael ,deputy Alice Glenn told the House this new knowledge prompted her to believe that the Anti-Amendment Campaign was being orchestrated by persons who had a vested interest in the rejection of God's noble gift of life.

This has all the appearances of an unedited press release - if not an internal memo - from the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign. The facility with which the Independent identifies with this point of view, and its reluctance to consider alternative positions, is seen most clearly in its coverage of the public meeting organized by the Anti-Amendment Campaign at the Mansion House on Wednesday, February 2. This receives twenty-four column inches in the Times - a judicious report which concentrates on the arguments adduced by the various speakers, avoiding the more emotive and effusive contributions. In the course of the report, half a column inch is devoted to the fact that one of the speakers, a Methodist clergyman, was constantly heckld from the hall. If the purpose of such heckling was to physically obliterate all traces of opposing points of view, and even public discussion itself, then it certainly succeeded as far as the Independent was concerned. Devoting a mere four inches to what it terms "the rally", it totally ignores both speakers and arguments and concentrates instead on the hecklers, implying not only that they enjoyed significant support from the hall but that in their peaceful exercise of free speech, they were physically violated by the unruly tactics of Anti-Amendment supporters:

Cat callIs at rally

Cat calls from a small but vocal group disrupted an anti-amendment rally in Dublin's Mansion House, last night,' writes Joseph Power.

Stewards were asked several times by Ursula Barry, a member of the steering committee, of the Anti-Amendment Campaign, to act on their own initiative and remove where necessary those who continued to disrupt the meeting.

A man, who addressed "the platlorm” from the floor to say that Mr. John Mitchell, the national executive member of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions - which recently said it opposed the planned referendum - did not represent him was supported by several others in the hall. But even as he stood silently to make a further point the original protester was removed from the Round Room.

These are obvious and clear-cut cases of the manufacture of news. What is perhaps more important, because less discernible, are the more subtle forms of emotional management, particularly in the use of words and phrases calculated to pre-empt the reader's response to certain issues. Thus, for example, in the Irish Times report of the incident in which June Levine was prevented from discussing abortion on the RTE programme Women Today, we are told that in the book, Ms. Levine "describes how she had an abortion in England in 1967" (Irish Times February 1: my italics). By contrast, we are informed in the Independent that Ms. Levine "admits having had an abortion in Britain" (my italics). Whereas the Times introduces its report by stating simply that Ms. Levine was prevented from speaking on the radio programme, the Independent personalizes the issue by stating that it was "RTE 'Women Today' presenter Ann Daly" who was banned from discussing the matter with Ms. Levine. Moreover, Ann Daly is not just one presenter among others but is rather "the controversial 'Women Today' radio programme journalist". (This adjective, incidentally, also betrays the Times's own value-judgements - it reserves it for "the recent controversial decision by the RTE authority's chairman, Mr. Fred O'Donovan, to veto discussion on the abortion issue". Interestingly, the word also infiltrates the Press's reporting of the incident, although here it is used in a less contentious sense, referring to "RTE's handling of the abortion controversy".)

This kind of reporting attempts to cancel opposing points of view by disfiguring them, however imperceptibly. Another way of neutralizing alternative positions is simply by ignoring them, or disavowing their very existence. Thus, for example, one of the most important breaches in the Government's own ranks occurred when Monica Barnes announced her intention to vote against the Amendment. This passed without comment in the Independent or, for that matter, in the Press. Another important source of support for the Anti-Amendment case came with the declaration by 98 barristers of their opposition to the Amendment. This was given prominent coverage in the Times and the Press, but was silently effaced once more by the Independent. It was to be expected then that when dissent came from within the Church itself, as in the case of the publication of Fr Austin Flannery's collection of essays Abortion and Law, the argument by elision would receive its most articulate expression. Thirty-two column inches were devoted to this publication in the Times and fifteen column inches in the Press. The Independent passed over it in silence.

This inability to acknowledge opposing or alternative positions points to a world view impervious to criticism, argument or discussion, a world regulated by authority rather than rationality. In this sense, perhaps the most revealing aspect of the Independent's approach to the campaign concerns its attempts to preclude all debate and argument by anchoring its reports in authority figures rather than on a discussion of the issues, in effect, inducing an unquestioning acceptance of those on high rather than subjecting them to rational analysis and examination. When the historian Joseph Lee optimistically devoted one section in his book The Modernization of Irish Society to the end of deference, one is tempted to suggest that he overlooked the role that the Irish Independent was to play in future Irish society. So far from deference being eroded with the fall of feudalism, a more likely occurence, as J.H. Whyte has acutely observed, is that it passed from the landlord to the Catholic Church and the forms of social mobilization promoted by the clergy. Hence, in the authoritarian universe of the Independent, it does not matter what is said but rather who says it. Whereas the Times report of the Pro-Amendment publication Abortion Now consists in a summary of William Binchy's and other's arguments, the Independent prefaces its summary of Mr Binchy's position by introducing him in the very first sentence as "one of the country's leading legal experts". This sets the tone for the rest of the discussion: "in the same booklet" we are told, "a leading obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr. John F. Murphy said medical science had made such strides in recent decades that it was now essentially unknown (sic) for a pregnancy to be so hazardous to the mother's health that there might be grounds for abortion" (Irish Independent February 8: my italics). Nor is this an isolated instance. Some days previously, remarks made by Mr. John Blayney SC at a Pro-Amendment conference were introduced in a similar fashion: "The right of life of the unborn child, unlike the right to life of the citizen, is not expressly guaranteed in the Constitution, said a leading lawyer last night". (Irish Independent February 2: my italics).

It is important to note, moreover, that the use of 'leading' in contexts such as these does not designate someone speaking in a representative capacity, or on behalf of other people it denotes rather the authority of the professional, the cult of the expert in the face of which the 'ordinary' person is reduced to the level of the layman or laywoman, the amateur or the illinformed.

This deference to authority and the cult of the expert permeates the Independent's entire coverage of the issue. Thus in an otherwise interesting article by Joe Carroll entitled "How you should not begin your crusade" (Irish Independent February 15) we are told that the crux of the dilemma surrounding the Amendment is that it has "highly experienced theologians and doctors in deadlock". Later in the same article, Garret FitzGerald's "unsound logic" is castigated, but rather than acquainting us with examples of this unsound logic, with the flaws in FitzGerald's arguments, we are simply informed that "the logic gets shakier as the counter arguments flow in from legal advisors, doctors, Protestant clergymen, Trade unionists, his own back benchers, his Labour allies, even Catholic theologians". The nature of these arguments remains unclear - if the experts are not convinced, then we should simply take it on trust that all is not well with the order of things.

What we have here is an example of a persistent urge to locate truth in what the American sociologist Howard Becker terms "a hierarchy of credibility". This tendency can perhaps be seen at its clearest in one of two editorials which the Independent devoted to the campaign in February. Expressing caution over the proposed wording in view of the public reservations stated by the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions, the editorial, rather than specifying the defects in question, makes recourse once more to the argument from authority: "It seems to be vaguely suspicious that learned legal men have not been able to find the right form of words so far. It is also disturbing to know that there are other legal experts who claim that there is nothing wrong with the wording as it stands." (Irish Independent February 16: my italics).

When the experts cannot agree, the deferential ideology of the Irish Independent is rocked to its very foundations. However, all is not lost for there is still a second line of defence that should draw our unquestioning allegiance. Despite the disagreement among the experts, the editorial suggests that: "A pro-abortion attitude would be quite wrong. The leaders of Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fail have allowed (sic) adopted an uncompromising anti-abortion stand and we should believe them." (My italics.)
My argument throughout this analysis is not simply that the Irish Independent is biased in its presentation of the campaign, whereas the Times and the Press expose us to the harsh glare of objective reality. All of the papers are arguing from committed positions, and none can claim to have privileged access to a reality beyond the reach of ideology and valuejudgements. However, my point is that whereas some positions seek to promote and actively encourage debate, others attempt to suppress discussion by enjoining people to shift responsibility for making up their own minds onto experts and authority figures, or when that fails, by resorting to the silent elision of opposing points of view. The denial of difference and democracy implicit in this position is seen at its starkest in the concluding paragraph to an article written by Joe Power, the Independent religious correspondent, early on in the campaign:

"Ireland should today be a nation of people who make things happen. Regrettably we have sat back and let others make the running. If the pro-abortionists succeed in convincing Irish society to vote against the amendment, there is little point in wringing our hands later and saying "if only we knew", as thousands of unborn Irish babies are carted off to the incinerators" (my italics).
Here the use of the words 'we', 'our' and 'the nation' is identified with the Pro-Amendment point of view, denying the reader or indeed Irish society any alternative but to acquiesce to this partisan position. It follows that those who persist in their opposition to the Amendment are deprived of their identity and hence eliminated as Irish citizens.

In the final analysis, the cursory and peremptory coverage of the campaign in papers sympathetic to the Pro-Amendment position suggests that the argument from authority inherent in this standpoint does not depend solely or even primarily on the media for its dissemination. This lack of reliance on the media is so pronounced that one is tempted to see in this a confirmation of a historical pattern in Irish society whereby progressive or radical causes have tended to mobilize around the press and related media forms, whereas opposing, conservative forces, particularly of a sectarian nature, have tended to engineer consensus without reference to the media, indeed often portraying the media as their main antagonist.

This generalisation, sweeping though it may be, tends to suggest that the media have an important contribution to make in eliminating sectarianism in Irish society. In this respect, there is perhaps a measure of irony in the fact that it was a spokesperson from SPUC who touched on the heart of the matter regarding the role of the media in the campaign. "There can be no room for a neutral stance by journalists on the abortion issue".