Newspapers
Newspapers have been published in Ireland since the late seventeenth century. In the mid-eighteenth century, newspapers became a regular part of the political, social, and commercial scene, and by the end of the century the press increasingly reflected the political debates on Catholic claims and the nature of the government of Ireland. At the beginning of the nineteenth century papers were being published in Dublin and in all the large towns of Ireland.
In 1774 taxes were imposed on newsprint, advertisements, and paper, and bonds had to be lodged with the revenue department. Dublin Castle regulated the press, partly through contracts to publish government proclamations and official advertisements, and partly through the distribution of secret service monies that were voted by Parliament to support newspapers acting in the government interest. Editors who published material thought to be seditious were prosecuted repeatedly, often by dubious means and before a prejudiced judiciary.
The press was used by the growing number of political movements to further their causes. Daniel O'Connell used newspapers both in Dublin and in the provinces as his allies in the repeal movement. From its founding in1823, one of the aims of the Catholic Association was "a liberal and enlightened press" (Wyse 1829, appendix, p. xliii), and part of the Catholic "rent" was spent on press publicity. The provinces were always important to O'Connell, who supported the founding of the Limerick Reporter as a repeal newspaper in 1839. From the 1840s onwards, the Repeal Association founded reading rooms that subscribed to newspapers, which were often read aloud to groups of peasants.
The Nation (1842–1897) was founded in Dublin by Charles Gavan Duffy in collaboration with Thomas Davis and John Blake Dillon. Its aim was to further the campaign for repeal, and it became crucial to the rise of the Young Ireland movement, which eventually (in 1846) seceded from the movement for repeal. It claimed a readership of 250,000 and was distributed in the repeal
reading rooms. The Nation had a program to disseminate the history and culture of Ireland, and it influenced the content of successive provincial papers. Dublin Castle thought that those whom it considered to be uneducated were susceptible to material that might lead them to commit violence and acts of sedition, so the Nation was suppressed during the 1848 rebellion; Duffy was twice prosecuted for sedition and twice discharged. Many other newspapers were also seized and the repeal reading rooms were closed down. The Nation was edited by A. M. and T. D. Sullivan from 1855 to 1874, and was used by them, too, as a major propaganda force for Irish nationalism.
In the 1850s the Tenant League was the first political movement to employ the press to its fullest extent. Charles Gavan Duffy of the Nation and John Gray of the Freeman's Journal (1763–1921) organized the conference that founded the League in 1850, and John Francis Maguire of the Cork Examiner (1841–) and James MacKnight of the Banner of Ulster (1842–1869) furthered its cause through articles and speeches.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, newspapers in the provinces were published mostly by patent-medicine vendors and stationers. With the polarization of political parties at mid-century, newspapers were increasingly founded with political aims in mind. Elections proved profitable for the press, which charged for reporting meetings and printing leaflets. Between 1853 and 1861 stamps on newspapers and taxes on advertisements and paper were abolished, and this, together with the increase in literacy and a rise in consumer spending, brought about the rise of cheap newspapers, especially in the provinces. They were extensively read in the reading rooms established by mechanics' institutes, employers, and town governments throughout Ireland. Initially, new titles tended to be liberal, but a minority of editors and proprietors moved into nationalist politics. The move toward mass political movements was reflected in the press; there was a sharp rise in the number of nationalist papers, particularly in the provinces, where the numbers rose from none in 1861 to thirty-four in 1891. A number of provincial newspapermen went on to become nationalist members of Parliament. By 1879 there were 127 newspapers published outside Dublin, a rise of 85 percent over the previous thirty years.
Outside Ulster, Protestant unionist newspapers, which had flourished early in the nineteenth century all over Ireland, gradually decreased in number, and inside Ulster, the number of newspapers sympathetic to liberalism decreased. New newspapers reflected the sectarian divide: The Belfast Telegraph group was founded in 1870 in the interests of the Orange Order; the Banner of Ulster was the newspaper of the Presbyterian Church. Extreme Protestant views flourished around mid-century in William Johnston's Downshire Protestant (1855–1862).
The Fenians were slow to use newspapers for propaganda, although a number of provincial editors close to Fenianism, such as Denis Holland of the Belfast Vindicator and Martin O'Brennan of the Connaught Patriot in Tuam, Co. Galway, were advocating proto-Fenian ideas in the 1850s. James Stephens founded the Irish People (1863–1865) in Dublin as the voice of Fenianism, but it was suppressed and its journalists arrested. Its nationalist successor was the Irishman (1858–1881). It was owned by the journalist Richard Pigott who, during the Land War, changed his politics and aimed to destroy the Parnellite movement. To silence Pigott's propaganda, the Irish Nationalist Party bought out the Irishman and closed it down. In its stead Charles Stewart Parnell founded United Ireland (1881–1898), edited by William O'Brien, a paper in support of the Land League. With the split in the party following Parnell's involvement in the O'Shea divorce in 1890, United Ireland took an anti-Parnellite line until it was forcibly extended by Parnell and its editor, Matthew Bodkin, expelled. Parnell went on to found the Irish Daily Independent in 1891. Parnell's new paper was challenged by Martin Murphy's anti-Parnellite National Press (1891–1892), which amalgamated with the Freeman's Journal. Murphy later founded the Daily Nation (1897–1900), which merged with the Irish Daily Independent to become a mass-circulation paper, the Irish Independent. The Irish Independent supported Cumann na nGaedheal in 1923 and is now the largest-circulation morning newspaper in Ireland.
The Gaelic-speaking population declined rapidly during and after the Great Famine, owing in large part to emigration and the move to towns. Literacy in Gaelic was uncommon, but increasingly in the nineteenth century newspapers published columns in Gaelic. However, no Irish-language mass-circulation newspaper has yet been successful. In the twentieth century the Gaelic League founded An Claidheamh Soluis (1899–1938) as its official paper, but its circulation was small.
Eamon de Valera founded the daily Irish Press (1931–1995) to provide a platform for the Fianna Fáil Party, and he and his family kept tight editorial control. It was addressed to the lower middle class and to women especially, and had an Irish-language section and particularly good coverage of Gaelic sports. By the 1980s, however, the newspaper was in trouble, and after a legal judgment against it for damages as compensation that could not be paid and a dispute with its journalists, it closed in 1995.
By 2001 in the Republic there were two national morning daily papers, a regional daily, and four Sunday papers. Only Dublin and Cork have evening papers. There are about fifty local papers that are published weekly. Belfast has four morning papers and one evening paper. The Belfast News-Letter, first published in 1737, is the oldest newspaper in print in the British Isles. There are also three daily papers published in Northern Ireland outside Belfast. In addition, since the mid-1960s British papers have had a growing share of the Irish market, and several publish Irish editions.
