Sir, - Dick Walsh takes a strange slant in his coverage of the coverage of the Albert Reynolds libel trial. Joe Duffy and I are both accused of having "spoken to those on the Reynolds side before reporting on the decision of the Sunday Times not to call a witness, Fergus Finlay".
Since I quoted Mr Reynolds calling Finlay a "chicken", I clearly did speak to him. The Sunday Times declined to comment.
Mr Walsh neglects to mention that my article also included Mr Finlay's response to this outrageous suggestion.
So sensitive is Mr Finlay that he even phoned Daily Record from a phone box in Sandymount to offer clarification to Joe Duffy on the Chicken Question (not for Fergus the standard issue mobile phone so beloved of special advisers).
While flattered that Mr Walsh borrowed so many of my lines from the Sunday Independent to add a bit of colour to his article I am at a loss as to how he supports his conclusion that "while some representatives of the Irish media reach for their green flags, others have their eyes on a different target, the international media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Sunday Times".
I don't have a green flag in the house, as would be clear from even the most cursory reading of my work, and I used to work for Mr Murdoch's Sunday Times. Of which offence do I stand accused?
Because he didn't like my article but did like Gene Kerrigan's, and without offering any evidence of mutual contradiction, he accuses the Sunday Independent of "trying to have it both ways". Indeed he compares our supposed schizophrenia to that of the Sunday Times - which told Ireland that Albert Reynolds was in a mess, and England that he was a liar. Nonsense. A diversity of opinion, approach, and style is just one of the strengths of the Sunday Independent.
I presume it is coincidental that the three journalists Dick Walsh chose to criticise were the only three who said, or reported, anything less than flattering about Fergus Finlay. - Yours, etc.,
Fitzgerald Street,
Dublin 6W.