The relationship between former president Mary Robinson and The Irish Times was far from cosy, writes Conor Brady in an edited second extract from his new book.
When president Mary Robinson was inaugurated in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle on December 3rd, 1990, there was a sense that something wonderfully new, hopeful and fresh had happened in Irish public life.
What had been a rather pedestrian inauguration ceremony on previous occasions was transformed by the glamour and elegance of the new president in her purple and gold. The delivery and theme of her inauguration address sent frissons around the great hall. She quoted from the poetry of Séamus Heaney and Eavan Boland and spoke of reaching out to Ireland's "fifth province" - the Irish diaspora scattered around the world.
There was electricity in the air and then there was sustained applause when she concluded: "May it be a Presidency where I, the president, can sing to you, citizens of Ireland, the joyous refrain of the 14th-century poet as recalled by WB Yeats, 'I am of Ireland . . . come dance with me in Ireland'."
I was at the back of the hall, with Vinnie Doyle, the editor of the Irish Independent. With no sign of the applause dying down, we caught each other glancing at our watches. We had newspapers to get out.
Later that evening, I caught the end of the State reception. There was an air of fiesta. Labour Party workers and veterans of the women's movement toasted each other at the taxpayers' expense. Some were literally weeping with joy. The president, nodding and smiling, moved among the crowd that pressed around to clutch her hand or merely to catch a glimpse.
That Mary Robinson is one of the most remarkable Irish people of her generation is not in question. But in retrospect, it is difficult to measure the extent to which she was an initiator of change, as distinct from a personification of new values and priorities that were in the ascendant in Irish society. In many ways, her most far-reaching contribution to the process of change in Irish society was behind her. She had been an important figure in pushing through reforms in personal rights and freedoms, such as contraception, the care of children and so on.
Did she cause change or did she merely reflect the change that was happening anyway? Did her presidency continue the process of change or was it simply an affirmation of change which she herself had played a major role in bringing about? These were questions with which I found myself having to grapple at frequent intervals, as we formulated editorial policy on this quite new style of presidency.
There was an impression, sometimes fostered by other media, that president Mary Robinson and The Irish Times were bound together in some sort of shared ideological agenda or mutual understanding. In reality, relations between the newspaper and her presidency were never more than polite and functional. And at times they were positively hostile.
In the early stages of her campaign, a number of women journalists at the newspaper attended one or possibly two of her strategy meetings. They included Mary Maher, Mary Cummins and Mary Holland. In addition, Donal Nevin, formerly general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and a member of The Irish Times Trust, was initially listed as one of her campaign supporters.
I called the trust chairman, Tom McDowell, when I saw Donal Nevin's name on some of Mary Robinson's literature. Any party political support or affiliation was clearly incompatible with membership of the trust. McDowell called Donal Nevin and told him he had to choose. Donal, realising the difficulty he had created for himself, did so. He stayed with the trust and in time became vice-chairman.
It was also likely that a majority of the journalists at the newspaper would have been Robinson voters. And virtually all of the opinion columnists had endorsed her in one degree or another. But most journalists are naturally cynical and generally inimical to anyone in power. The revolutionary hero they lionise today can be tomorrow's establishment target. After a period of euphoria and novelty, a somewhat more level perspective emerged on the Robinson presidency.
I met Mary Maher in the newsroom the day after the election. She seemed dazed. "This feels all wrong," she said wryly. "We've never been on the winning side of anything before!"
My editorial on the day before the presidential election was hardly a ringing endorsement for the would-be president Robinson:
"Part of Fianna Fáil's counter-attack on Ms Mary Robinson is that she is not what she would wish to appear: and that she is, in reality, certain things that she pretends not to be. That argument, in some respects, is not difficult to sustain. Ms Robinson has been, in some measure, reconstructed. Her marketing team has adjusted her very appearance, softened her political stance and occluded certain of her views . . . if votes were to be cast on the basis of candidates' straightforwardness and honest, unambiguous self-presentation, Mr Austin Currie would have to head the field . . . regrettably he has not succeeded in making sufficient impact with the voters."
A few days later, perhaps infected with the euphoria that followed the election result, I had abandoned my nit-picking approach:
"Mary Robinson's success . . . is phenomenal . . . it marks the point at which a narrow and often cruel road, journeyed by a society often narrow and cruel, gives the first sign of broadening out; widening into a more tolerant and accommodating carriageway, offering its users the choice of travelling at their own pace and in whatever company they wish. The voters - the women in particular - came out to make a statement for the rights of the individual; for the right of a woman to break out of the stereotype which church and State have tacitly enforced for decades; for a candidate who represented personal independence, confidence and self-respect; for a woman whose own circumstances affirmed that it is possible to be a successful mother and wife, an active Catholic and yet to represent a platform which has been characterised as repugnant to mainstream Irish opinion."
Over her first year in office, in particular, The Irish Times was taunted by other media about the extent of its presidential coverage. I decided to spend an evening in the cuttings library upstairs, immersing myself in the archives, comparing our coverage of Mary Robinson with that accorded to her predecessor, Patrick Hillery, when he had taken office in 1983.
The story-count and picture-count on Robinson were far higher. But it was clear that she was saying and doing more newsworthy things than the low-profile president Hillery. She was, simply, a more interesting story. That was borne out by the extent of foreign coverage she received. A woman president was unusual and interesting. The European media liked her. UK critics of their royal family pointed to her as an example of what a democratically-elected head of state could be - as distinct from a hereditary monarch. She was also extremely photogenic.
At one point, someone on the news desk team argued that we should appoint a "presidential correspondent" who would build an expertise about the story.
It would have been justified on the grounds of manpower, or womanpower, as there were few days when Mary Robinson was not doing something that warranted coverage. I turned down the idea, partly on the grounds that it might be too like the British media's "court" correspondents, assigned to report on the doings of the royal family.
As time went by, I gradually reduced the scale of presidential coverage, shortening routine news reports, using smaller photographs and putting more of them on inside pages.
But the reality was that Mary Robinson used the presidency to highlight issues and to further many causes that were traditionally part of the editorial platform of The Irish Times. Nothing could have been more natural than that it should laud her when she took initiatives to reach out to the marginalised and disaffected, when she spoke out against intolerance and discrimination or, indeed, when she controversially shook Gerry Adams's hand in Belfast before there was a visible peace process.
The supposed common agenda between the newspaper and the Robinson presidency did not go beyond that. There were no cosy chats around the Áras fireside or dinners with The Irish Times Trust. There was no tick-tacking with her press aide, Bride Rosney, beyond working out the logistics of covering public occasions.
In March 1994 we invited her to give the key address at the biannual Irish Times-Harvard University Colloquium. This event, initiated by Christina Murphy, was staged alternately at the Institute of Politics at Harvard or at one of the Dublin universities. The president was visiting the UN at New York and we managed to date the colloquium to coincide with her presence in the United States.
I invariably found myself puzzled in Mary Robinson's company at the contrast between her public and her private manner. She could dazzle a hall and charm a room filled with people. But she seemed to freeze in a one-to-one situation. At least she did with me. Perhaps she did not feel secure or comfortable in the company of journalists or editors.
At the Irish Times-Harvard University Colloquium she gave a bravura speech about the role of the UN in resolving world tensions. Afterwards the president of the university hosted a dinner for those involved, with president Robinson as the guest of honour.
Our host sat on Robinson's left while I sat on her right. After she had taken her seat she stared straight ahead as if in a trance. I heard the university president make some complimentary remarks to her about the speech. I heard no answer and saw just a slight nod of the head. After a minute or two of stony silence, I added my compliments. Another nod.
Desperately, I tried another tack. As a girl, my late mother had been at boarding school at Muckross Park in Dublin. In her old photo albums I had come across some photographs showing groups of young girls together in the grounds of the school, happily laughing and posing for the camera. My mother, Amy MacCarthy, stood at one side. Beside her was Tess O'Donnell, Mary Robinson's mother. I mentioned the coincidence, my finding of the photographs and described the happy scene of long-ago school days. Not even a nod this time. I gave up and concentrated on the guest to my right.
A few months later I was at an opening night at the Gate Theatre with my wife Ann. A couple of minutes before curtain up, the director, Michael Colgan, rushed over to where we were having a drink. He seemed flustered and concerned.
"La Robinson is here with her son at short notice," he explained. "Will you sit beside her and bring them down to the hospitality room at the interval?"
"Sure," I agreed. Colgan and I were friends and he was under all the pressures of a first night.
A member of the theatre staff brought us to a row of seats that had been partially cleared for the president and her son, Aubrey. Ann and I took our seats and a few minutes later the president and Aubrey arrived. Colgan, unnecessarily, introduced us and moved off. We had a few minutes before the performance was to begin. Ann leaned forward and engaged young Aubrey in conversation about school and such matters. He was about the same age as our older son, Neil. It was a pleasant, informal encounter and it held promise of being an enjoyable evening of entertainment.
I had not met the president since we had been at Harvard. I said that I thought the visit had gone well and thanked her again for her participation. She stared at the stage and nodded.
Reckoning that perhaps she was "off duty", and anxious to put work out of her mind, I expressed my admiration for Michael Colgan and his achievements as director at the Gate. She continued to stare at the stage. I gave up again and read my programme until the lights dimmed and the performance started.
Robinson's official biographers have used the adjective "shy" more than once in describing her. If that is what I encountered, they understated the case. I have always felt that there was more to it. Perhaps there was a wariness, a nervousness, about the media. Or perhaps, in spite of everything, she regarded The Irish Times as less supportive and less helpful than it might have been.
* * * * *
We had two disturbing encounters with Mary Robinson. The first was while she was president, the other when she had taken up her job as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Both involved the newspaper's most experienced foreign correspondent, Conor O'Clery.
In March and April 1995 president Robinson made a tour of South American states. Conor O'Clery, then based in Washington, was assigned to cover her visits to Argentina, Brazil and Chile. The tour was marked by a series of mishaps and failures of planning and communication. Mrs Robinson's authorised biography, co-written by Olivia O'Leary and Helen Burke, says "judging from the media coverage [the trip] seemed to lurch from one embarrassment to another".
Things first went wrong in Argentina. The authorised biography says: "It wasn't Independent Newspapers, however, but the well-disposed Irish Times and RTÉ who were responsible for the lowest point in Mary's relationship with the media." Elsewhere in the biography, Robinson appears to blame the Department of Foreign Affairs press office and the then Irish Ambassador to Argentina for part of the problem. "I think the ambassador wasn't very sympathetic to what we were about," she says.
The biography goes on: "These were state visits so the host country called the shots. Bride did not do her usual preparatory visit, so advance arrangements were left to ambassadors on the ground who would not, understandably, want any hassle with the host government."
The president was invited to visit a poor barrio district at San Moreno outside Buenos Aires served by Irish Dominican sisters. Initially, it was understood that she would do so. But it appears that the trip was blocked by Argentine president Menem. The nuns and local people had put on a welcome party out of their meagre resources and when the president did not arrive they were understandably distressed. A group of them then set out in a bus to attend a wreath-laying ceremony, at which the president was to honour the Irish-born founder of the Argentine navy, Adm William Brown.
The bus got stuck in mud on the highway and by the time they got into the city the wreath-laying ceremony was over. But Conor O'Clery had delayed at the scene and met them there. When he was told what had happened, he telephoned the hotel in central Buenos Aires where the presidential party was staying. Bride Rosney arranged for the nuns and their friends to meet the president there. This series of mishaps led to a great deal of unfavourable commentary in the Irish media. The general thrust of it was that Mary Robinson had let down her own people to avoid antagonising those in political power in her host country.
Later in the tour, when she was in Chile, she found herself at a state banquet and was asked to shake hands with the former dictator Gen Pinochet. The RTÉ camera crew was ordered by the Chilean authorities to leave the room before the handshake - at her request. No doubt it made the encounter somewhat less embarrassing for her. But many journalists were shocked at this rather crude attempt at media manipulation. The picture that emerged was not just one of disorganisation and lack of preparation but of a desperate attempt to "spin" the accompanying media.
The somewhat ramshackle organisation of the tour and the president's apparent willingness to accommodate her hosts' political agenda gave rise to speculation that she was preparing the way for a United Nations appointment for herself. O'Clery asked her if she was interested in being secretary-general when the incumbent, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, stepped down. She said she was not "qualified" for it but that she would welcome a woman in the post. I knocked out a fairly vinegary editorial:
"The president's reply was suitably bashful. No one would take it as a denial . . . Those who say she is interested (in the post) claim to discern careful calculation in her international schedule, spreading her visits strategically in order to secure international support when the time comes . . . the South American tour has been characterised by a sequence of sour moments and rather transparent attempts at buck-passing as one embarrassment succeeded another. Sympathisers of the president speak with concern of attempts to cramp her style and her vision of the office. Others in contact with her activities speak of her sense of restlessness and recognise a growing tendency to hauteur and stiffness about her."
The episode left a bad taste in many mouths and tarnished the president's hitherto more or less unblemished image.
Robinson's second, and perhaps more serious, clash with The Irish Times was in September 1998 when she made a visit to Tibet as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Conor O'Clery had moved to Beijing to open The Irish Times's first Asia bureau in 1996. He travelled extensively throughout China, reporting from many far-flung and remote parts of the country. But like other Western media representatives, he was forbidden open access to Tibet.
When it became known that the UN High Commissioner was planning to visit Tibet, he applied to the Chinese Foreign Ministry for permission to accompany her. To our surprise, he was granted permission, along with Charlie Bird of RTÉ.
But five days before the visit was to take place, the Foreign Ministry advised O'Clery that it had withdrawn his permission to travel at the request of the High Commissioner in Geneva. To me, this had resonances of president Robinson requesting the ejection of the RTÉ camera crew in Chile three years previously.
When O'Clery met her in Beijing at the Irish Embassy, she told him that having an Irish-only media entourage would "send the wrong message". She appeared to be anxious that her visit would not be seen as an Irish one but as a UN one.
This seemed untenable to me, since she did not block the travel arrangements for Charlie Bird and the RTÉ camera unit. I sent an urgent fax to Robinson protesting at her action and urging her to reconsider. But she held firm. There was a further exchange of faxes with her press secretary. But it was clear that The Irish Times was not going to Tibet.
We published a story detailing what had happened and describing how she had vetoed Conor O'Clery's visit. A few days later she wrote a "Letter to the Editor" in which she claimed that she was "deeply disappointed" at the outcome of her endeavours to assemble a "pool" of journalists for the visit, which would have included Conor O'Clery. No matter how I read it, it made little sense.
I felt that in blocking Conor's visit to Tibet, Mary Robinson was in effect striking a blow against much of what she was seen to stand for. Conor O'Clery was well known in international media circles. Here was an opportunity for a respected and experienced Irish journalist to report at first hand from a country where human rights had been denied and where victimised people were begging for the outside world to keep its focus upon them. It was, I felt, an irony that an Irish-born High Commissioner for Human Rights should effectively silence an eloquent commentary on conditions in Tibet. Charlie Bird's documentary was transmitted in time. But there is no printed record of what happened and did not happen in those days of Mary Robinson's Tibetan visit.
Up with the Times, by former Irish Times editor Conor Brady, is published later this week by Gill & Macmillan, €24.99
TeenTimes returns next Tuesday
