Diversity of opinion in democratic interest - Higgins

IN 24 hours President Michael D Higgins watched the hottest show on Broadway and delivered an address marking World Press Freedom Day at the United Nations.

He discussed global issues with UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and lunched at the residence of Ireland’s UN Ambassador, Anne Anderson.

He also gave an academic lecture in which he spoke “as a sociologist to historians” about Irish migrations. Then he attended a gala dinner where the Ireland Funds announced they had raised $120 million for Irish charities.

In his speech on World Press Freedom Day, Mr Higgins said the “global communications order” should be “informed by universal rights rather than be dominated by the strong or the elements of a monopolised market”.

Asked to comment on the state of the press in Ireland, where an increasingly large share of media is concentrated in the hands of one businessman and the national broadcaster is in crisis, Mr Higgins said it was “in the democratic interest to have a diversity of opinion”.

It would be “inappropriate” for him “to comment on any movements within ownership”, he said. But the Irish people’s “democratic right to have access and participate in a communications sense” was “not a corporate battle”.

Mr Higgins said he agreed with the old “rather paternalistic view” at the BBC that “the public broadcaster was the people talking to itself”. If the public broadcaster did not have adequate resources it might not be able to fulfil that mandate.

Mr Higgins noted that 60 journalists were killed around the world in 2011; and 14 already this year. Three Irish journalists figure on Unesco’s webpage remembering assassinated journalists: Veronica Guerin, Martin O’Hagan and Simon Cumbers.

In the UN’s guest book for visiting VIPs, Mr Higgins wrote: “The United Nations protects all of the freedom of the human family.”

But at the World Press Freedom Day event, men in dark suits delivered often repetitive speeches about journalists whose lives they could not save, in conflicts they could not prevent. “Those of us who are strong supporters of the UN would have wished that the UN reformed,” Mr Higgins admitted. “I wrote my comment because I still hope.”

The President praised Patricia O’Brien, the UN’s Irish under-secretary general for legal affairs, and John Ging, who heads the response division of the humanitarian affairs organisation OCHA. Mr Ging was “one of the most distinguished students I had the honour to teach in sociology”, he said. “He’s a great example of an Irish person who stood against incredible odds and great personal threats, in Gaza in particular ... He’s someone who we must be very, very proud of.”

Last night, Mr Higgins and his wife, Sabina, attended the American Ireland Fund’s 37th annual gala, where the guest of honour was Brian T Moynihan, the chief executive officer of Bank of America.

Other guests included Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the speaker of the New York council, Christine Quinn, New York police commissioner Ray Kelly, novelist Colum McCann and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.

More than 1,300 people attended the dinner, which raised $4.2 million for Irish charities. Kieran McLoughlin, president of the Worldwide Ireland Funds, announced that the Promising Ireland campaign, which sought to raise $100 million by the end of 2013, has surpassed that goal 19 months ahead of schedule.

The Ireland Funds have raised $120 million in the past 3½ years, more than a quarter of the total of $430 million collected for Irish charities since the fund was founded in 1976.

The President and Mrs Higgins, a former actor, were in their element at the Broadway adaptation of the Irish screenplay Once yesterday evening. “It was a brilliant night,” he said. “It was a great cast, given that they are all Americans.”

The playwright Enda Walsh, whom Mr Higgins knows from Galway, wrote the stage adaptation, to which he added three lively Czech characters who learn English from watching Fair City. “I thought the idea of Fair City as a pedagogic tool for the English language has immense possibilities,” the President joked.