Pat McArt: My biggest row with John Hume and a lament for the passing of ‘the local rag’

I fell out with John Hume fairly often. He was the local MP and I was the editor of the local paper. He thought everything he said should be the lead story. I tended to think that was my decision, not his.

We had a massive row one time about the Haagerup Report.

If anyone reading this can remember what that was, go to the top of the class.

Assuming that the vast majority, including myself, have only a vague notion, let me fill you in.

The Haagerup Report was commissioned by the European Parliament in 1984. Basically, it was the first time Europe decided it should not just be left to Westminster to resolve our conflict. It decided to get involved.

Hume, who had worked his magic in Strasbourg to get his MEP colleagues to agree, was absolutely delighted, and told me that it was big news. He was dead right. It was.

He even rang me at home on a Sunday evening to give a statement so that he would be first in for the Tuesday edition. That was how it worked in those days.

What neither he nor I knew as we spoke that evening was that the British army had decided to act the maggot big time, sealing off every checkpoint in and out of the city for a couple of hours, leading to total gridlock.

There didn’t seem to be any operational reason for it, other than it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and they were letting people heading to the beaches of Donegal know who was in charge.

It just seemed nasty and capricious. They did it because they could.

The next morning the Mayor, Alderman Willie O’Connell, issued a hard-hitting statement attacking the army, accusing it of collective punishment, downright bigotry and of deliberate harassment of the people of Derry.

As editor, I decided this story was going to be the lead. It was the only thing people I met were talking about.

And the inevitable happened – Hume and myself had a big row about it. He was raging about Haagerup being demoted to page three.

During the course of some heated exchanges, I remember reminding him that he was getting plenty of coverage for his good work in other places.

“Jeezus, John, give me a break’, says I, “this is not the BBC, the Washington Post or the Sunday Times. This is the Derry Journal.”

“Aagh,” he shot back, “but this is the paper that gets me elected”.

I was reading the other day about a guy called Malcolm Denmark, owner of a publishing group called Media Concierge, and how he has become the proprietor of The Scotsman and The Yorkshire Post and numerous other titles in the UK.

What’s not so well known is that this same guy owns a large swathe of the Irish media including the Derry Journal, the Londonderry Sentinel, the News Letter, the Limerick Leader and God knows how many other weeklies.

Gone, clearly, are the days when local papers were almost entirely locally owned and locally run. The proprietors, by and large, lived in the area, the editor could be seen day and daily in the community, and the staff would have their kids going to the local school.

There was a lot of accountability in that.

I have to admit that these days I don’t know who runs the local papers. And I rarely come across a reporter or a photographer at any event I attend.

There is little or no individuality any more either. The format of most publications seems to be a kind of universal default print setting – they all look the same.

I am sounding like my parents now, but it really was all so different back in my day.

I have told the story many times of how, while working in RTÉ, I was offered the job in the Derry Journal and was told by a well-known personality in the city that there were only three jobs that counted there – the MP (John Hume), the Bishop (Edward Daly) and the editor of the Derry Journal (soon to be me).

I initially laughed at that, but subsequently found that it was substantially true.

This was at a time when ‘the local rag’ really played a major role in society.

Because we were at the heart of the community, we were, I believe, a force for good. We did hold public representatives to account.

We covered the courts and the councils fairly and impartially. We had coverage of feiseanna, weddings, graduations. We told the stories of the trials and tribulations of our people.

Letters to the editor gave everyone the chance to express an opinion. And in the classified adverts section you could buy anything from the proverbial needle to an anchor.

Indeed, I agree totally with the American playwright Arthur Miller, who observed that “a good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself”.

I would contend that a good newspaper was also, despite its flaws, local democracy at its finest.

So, can anyone honestly tell me that X, Facebook, TikTok or any of the other digital media platforms that dominate our media landscape these days come anywhere close to that?

I’ll let you all make up your own minds on that…

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