an open letter to tony o'reilly proprietor of independent newspapers

O'Reilly.
You will be aware the Bishop of Cloyne is attracting opprobrium in your newspapers.
You will be aware also that he is effectively standing aside from his position as Bishop.
Your publications more than the others who have clamoured against him, have brought about what amounts to his downfall.
O'Reilly I have been reading the copious coverage of the Bishop of Cloyne in your newspapers.
I have been reading the coverage searching for a smoking gun.
That is to say, searching for a single salient charge that would justify your newspapers' deliberate attempts to ruin the Bishop of Cloyne.
But in all your copious coverage I have not found a single charge against the Bishop that justifies the present vilification of his life, witness and career.
In fact I have found no charges at all.
No direct allegations of wrong doing.
Barely anything specific.
Just a generalised wall to wall condemnation.
And an assumption of guilt.
Read the article in your Sunday Independent by Emer O'Kelly.
Read it O'Reilly.
You pay Emer O'Kelly to write this drivel.
You profit from Emer O'Kelly's manipulation of the situation.
You O'Reilly are responsible for what Emer O'Kelly writes.
Tell me O'Reilly.
Do you in good conscience stand over what Emer O'Kelly wrote in your newspaper today about the Bishop of Cloyne?
Don't claim that you give editorial independence to your journalists.
Because it's not true O'Reilly.
Three decades ago you brought the young fire brand Marxist Gene Kerrigan onto the staff of the Sunday Independent.
You adjudged that it would be better to have a conflict theory socialist atheist revolutionary like Gene Kerrigan in your tent pissing out, rather than a conflict theory socialist atheist revolutionary like Gene Kerrigan outside your tent pissing in.
For thirty years in your newspaper Gene Kerrigan has demeaned the Catholic Church, Irish society, Christian values, the free world, democracy, and all that jazz.
But Gene Kerrigan ain't never breathed a word about the exponential powers devolving to you O'Reilly and to your family in Irish public life.
Gene Kerrigan has never analysed the neo feudal influence you have been accruing to yourself O'Reilly.
He's never even mentioned it.
The great anti establishmentarian Gene Kerrigan falls strangely silent when it comes to such matters.
He has never so much as whispered about the emergence of your new dynastic power brokerage, the appalling aglomeration of wealth and privelege centred around you and your offspring O'Reilly.
The untameable Gene Kerrigan has become the ultimate conformist.
But at least he gives the lie to the notion that there's editorial freedom at Independent Newspapers.
Doesn't he O'Reilly?
In this regard, we may say, his silence speaks volumes.
So tell me.
Do you stand over what Emer O'Kelly wrote about the Bishop of Cloyne?
I gotta tell you O'Reilly.
Some day you will account to God for what she has written.
As I will account for what I write.
You know, as far as I can honestly ascertain O'Reilly, your copious newspaper coverage of the Bishop of Cloyne amounts to little more than a psychoticised bout of synchronised sneering on the part of some of the most talentless writers in the English speaking world.
My God O'Reilly.
This can't be right.
There are vague suggestions that in his twenty year career as Bishop of Cloyne the man in question failed to take sufficient action on accusations relating to sex abuse.
But the suggestions are very generally stated.
Nothing too precise.
And the assumptions underlying those suggestions seem very much the stuff of hindsight.
It's as though the standard of what amounts to appropriate action has been arbitrarily delineated in order to wrongfoot anyone who has ever held a position of priestly responsibility.
Where will it end O'Reilly?
I mean how will you switch it off?
Will you hound every single school principal, hospital administrator, and social worker from office along with the Bishops?
How about the Judges and legal professionals who know sex abuse is going on in family homes across Ireland but who leave the children where they are because they deem that policy to be best practice at the moment?
Will you come after them in a few years?
What will you replace them with?
Journalists from Independent Newspapers?
The allegations about the Bishop's stewardship of his office, as presented in your publications are almost completely composed of generalities and innuendos.
It all looks fairly nebulous O'Reilly.
I've been looking through your copious coverage for some evidence that the Bishop of Cloyne actually deserves what your newspapers have done to him.
I genuinely cannot find it.
I say more.
I think some of your writers, and some of the writers and broadcasters working for other media groups, have grown a little bit afraid of what they've done to the Bishop of Cloyne.
They've been hinting that it was the Pope who forced him to stand aside.
It's almost as though your writers don't want to take responsibility for what they have done.
They're not comfortable O'Reilly with the victory they have won and the defeat they have inflicted.
Why would this be O'Reilly?
Could it be they suspect that what they have done will be easier to start than to stop?
If the Bishop of Cloyne can be brought down in the circumstances you have used to bring him down, who O'Reilly, I say who, will be safe?
No man in Ireland could stand against a pack of Independent Newspapers hounds in full cry.
Is this healthy for the country?
For the truth?
For anyone?
O'Reilly I am writing to you now without access to the full facts.
If I knew for sure you had behaved unjustly towards the Bishop of Cloyne, I would have fought you to the gates of hell on his behalf.
But all I have is a vague suspicion.
I suspect you and your newspapers are out of control and have brought down a decent man.
Someday we shall know.
James Healy