A self-reinforcing media frenzy blew Myers row out of all proportion, writes Terry Prone.
More than a week after his provocative column, casual radio listeners still hear coverage of it replete with references to Kevin Myers as a synonym for evil. He has become a hate figure unrivalled in modern times, his safety threatened, his relatives pursued by media.
This, after a quarter-century of terrorist atrocities and a matching period of political corruption which not only damaged public trust, but defrauded every taxpayer.
The columnist advanced a contentious thesis already proposed by a prominent academic, using a word grievously offensive to single parents and their families.
But, to quote Boris Becker, "It wasn't a war. Nobody died." Myers didn't kill. Or terrorise. Or steal. There's a certain moral paradox about Ireland demonstrating greater outrage over a household name penning an inflammatory article than over several household names driving when drunk, thereby endangering the lives of innocent passers-by. More condemnation has been devoted to this man than to the men who cut Robert McCartney's throat and intimidated a pub-full of witnesses.
That disproportionality emerges from the way media have developed in Ireland. Before the issue of licences to new radio and TV stations, the expectation was that a proliferation of media outlets would enhance diversity and plurality of thought. The opposite has happened. The multiplicity of radio and print media has narrowed, rather than broadened, public discourse.
Competition doesn't lead to each of 20 media outlets pursuing 20 different stories, but to fierce one-up-manship on a single story. Each media outlet picks up and reacts to other media outlets' definition of what constitutes the day's hot issue.
On radio alone, it's possible, on any given evening in Dublin, to catch an interview with X on George Hook's programme on Newstalk, hear the same interviewee on Matt Cooper's The Last Word, then join them on Rachel English's 5/7 Live before seeing them on RTÉ's Six One News and TV3's early bulletin.
Of course, not every listener listens to every radio programme. But channel-hopping by drivers caught in slow-moving traffic is constant. So what used to be a single item heard by any listener becomes a blizzard, delivering not only a cumulative emotional impact, but a sense that the item must be of massive importance to everybody - otherwise why would it be the focus of all media attention?
The publication of the JNLR figures this week underlines that media outlets are now primarily vehicles for the delivery of bodies to advertising agencies. You can't deliver bodies unless you catch their attention first. Hence the success of "car crash" media figures who, regardless of their talent or skill, attract attention by virtue of the threat/promise of public meltdown implicit in their personalities or track record.
Just as important, however, is the need to up the emotional temperature, level of outrage or vehemence of argument. So, in this case, Joe Duffy's showcasing of Mary Ellen Synon as an ostensible defender created a firestorm out of a fire and set every other programme on a scramble to match the heat generated by Liveline.
The heat was fuelled by coincidental factors. One was the current unprecedented level of mutual sniping between Irish media outlets. Another was the number of advocacy organisations related to the interests of single parents and children, which produced an astonishing number of highly articulate and informed spokespeople. A third was a lamentable lack of moral courage among those who covertly agree, not only with the thesis, but with the word used. Nor did any substantial public figure point to the dangers of the electronic mob, whatever the cause of that mob formation.
Those of us who passionately disagree, not only with the Irishman's Diary about single parents, but with many of Kevin Myers's recurring themes, should be wary of conflating disagreement on an issue and rejection of word usage with the same stereotyping we condemned in the original column.
The significant difference is that, whereas Myers unacceptably stereotyped a non-specific, unnamed group not identifiable on sight, liberals, in reaction, have stereotyped one identifiable human as personifying everything that is vile.
Having moved gratefully away from a closed, controlling society where a priest "reading" an individual from the altar could cause ostracism of that individual, it is worth remembering that one priest on one altar in one parish amounts to a whisper when compared to the national volume represented by contemporary mass media.
In the 1970s and 1980s, contrarians were cherished. Fair dues to them, went the consensus. They have the courage to say what the conservative majority doesn't want to hear. Now, when the liberal agenda is largely achieved, the liberal majority does not extend the same tolerance to right-wing contrarians. You can be any kind of contrarian you like - as long as it's liberal.
The liberal consensus is arguably now as coercive, controlling and devoid of compassion as any earlier cultural configuration.
Terry Prone is a director of Carr Communications