NOT ” FIT TO PRINT”

Posted By: March 29, 2013

The famed motto of the New York Times is, ” “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

That has not always been true of it’s coverage of Northern Ireland, with the exception of a few journalists.

Here is a letter of Fr. Mc Manus that The Times saw not fit to print.

New York Times
Letters to the Editor
January 29, 2009

Dear Editor,
It is quite ridiculous, especially at this stage, for Times to explain the Northern Ireland Troubles thus: “The struggle cast Protestant paramilitaries loyal to Britain against armed groups with roots in the Roman Catholic minority, including the Irish Republican Army, that campaigned for a united Ireland”. (Payment Plan for Northern Ireland Reconciliation Provokes Outrage. January 28).
What about the British Army and the virtually all-Protestant police, the sectarian Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)?
Most informed people know that the British Army made a calculated decision to militarize the situation on Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, by killing 13 unarmed, innocent Catholics at a non-violent Civil Rights march in Derry City — because the British could not deal with thousands of non-violent Catholics marching for basic rights, denied since the undemocratic state of Northern Ireland was established in 1920.
And everyone surely knows that the basic conflict was between the IRA and the British Army. British security and intelligence forces funded, trained and in some cases totally controlled Protestant murder gangs who targeted, not the IRA, but innocent Catholics — the well-known counter insurgency tactic that the British have used the world over.
What is it that The Times doesn’t get?