Irish Daily Mirror editor John Kierans tells CATHERINE REILLY why he believes Ireland’s Travellers are the makers of their own bad press - although not everyone agrees
JOHN KIERANS is just what you’d expect in a tabloid newspaper editor: a like-it-or-lump-it, no-nonsense type whose antennae probably stay raised in his sleep. “The smells like a stitch-up,” he announces, referencing the topic of Travellers – and my tight deadline.
Kierans is editor at the Irish Daily Mirror and author of Stop The Press!, a behind-the-scenes account of life as a tabloid hack. With over two decades at tabloid journalism’s coalface, Kierans has some definite views on the overwhelmingly negative coverage meted out to Travellers in Ireland’s red tops.
“It’s very simple about Travellers in general in this country,” says Kierans. “They want everyone to respect their rights but Travellers in general don’t want to respect ordinary citizens’ rights. That’s where there’s a clash.
“We’re reporting stories in the paper on people who are doing wrong and it doesn’t matter who they are or what they are. It can be people who have a criminal past or just ordinary folk, they break the law and we write about it – and the same applies to Travellers.”
He continues: “The ones who make the big song and dance that they come from the Travelling community is Travellers themselves. And they’re always on about their rights, but they never talk about respecting other people’s rights.
“Most people, to be quite honest about it, have absolutely no problem with Travellers, as long as Travellers respect their property and their rights – and that’s where the fundamental clash is. Travellers generally don’t respect a lot of other people’s rights.”
Regarding the notion that negative media coverage actually fuels resentment and misbehaviour among some in the Travelling community, spurning a vicious cycle, Kierans’ frank response is: “Bullshit.”
“Some Travellers will always have a chip on their shoulder,” he says. “The bottom line here is one of respect. You know, you have to win respect, respect is earned and it has to be won.
“Certainly some Travellers don’t do their community any justice, because they’ve no respect. They don’t mind coming over and camping on your land and destroying your garden – how many places have we seen that happen? – and the mess they leave behind, and they don’t give a shit about it.
“They couldn’t give a shit about the mess they’re leaving behind, and then they expect us all to be sympathetic to them?”
Martin Collins, director of Travellers’ rights organisation Pavee Point, takes obvious exception to Kierans’ remarks, a taster of which are read out to him.
“I’d say his comments are, how would I say, generalising and stereotyping,” says Collins, himself a Traveller. “We are not ‘playing the victim’ – we are victims of oppression, and we’re not just lying down and taking it.”
Collins adds that Pavee Point has “engaged quite a bit with the media”, working with the National Union of Journalists to develop specific reporting guidelines on Travellers, and also engaging with media students, among other activities. But as a “small NGO”, there is only so much the organisation can do, he points out.
The leading Traveller rep is not a tabloid reader – “they lack analysis and depth” and are “very superficial”, he says. Indeed, Pavee Point has made no specific attempts to engage with the tabloids on their coverage, he confirms, although its press releases go to all types of media organisations.
“I’d have no problem putting that in the paper,” replies John Kierans, when asked if a feel-good Travellers piece, perhaps on a promising sports star, was flagged with his editorial team.
“Let me tell you, the Mirror is a newspaper that represents the working class, we shout for the poor and the underprivileged, and certainly there’s many, many Traveller families who are decent people and they don’t break the law and they are part of the working class and the underprivileged. We’re more than willing to shout for them and fight for them.
He adds: “If there are any good news stories in any sector of our community we’d highlight that in our paper. [But] Travellers never ever come to us with any good news stories, ever. No Traveller group has ever come to us with a good news story.”
