The Manufacture of Irish 'Crime.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 13, 27 March 1902, Page 2

The Manufacture of Irish 'Crime.'

Reference has often been made in these columns to the obvious bias and unlairnebs and often shunt less disregard of truth with winch the cabled ilemsof Catholic or Irish news are generally tainted when they reach these shoies, and readers ot the N Z, Taisllt have been again and again warned to be on their guard and make liberal allowance for the obliquity of the ' cabledammer ' when they meet with these

violent statements, prejudicial to faith or fatherland, in the cable news of the daily press. We had always charitably supposed, however, that after the cables had actually come to hand they were, in the offices at least of all the reputable colonial papers, treated with something like fair play and reproduced in a way that bore some reasonable resemblance to the form in which they had been received. Recent experience on the other side shows how easily this confidence may be misplaced, and discloses the fact that in a quarter where one would certainly little expect it cable messages are ' rigged ' and ' faked 'in a way that is utterly indefensible. An exposure of these discreditable tactics has been recently made by ' Tapley,' the contributor of 'Easy Chair Jottings' to the Melbourne Advocate, and one of the instances he gives is so clear and so glaring that it is worth reproducing in full. A cablegram had been despatched from London giving a brief account of an alleged ' moonlight ' outrage in Ireland, and was reproduced in the Argus in pretty much the simple form in which it had been received. Here is the message as it appeared in the Argus : — ' A moonlighters' outrage. — London, March 10. — A remarkable outrage is reported from Kilrush, a town in the County Clare, Ireland. Some mounted men, with masked faces, rode up to the house of a Mrs. M'lnerney, neafr the town, and fired their revolvers through ,the windows fortunately without injuring anyone. A police patrol arrived on the scene in time to see the ' moonlighters ' disappearing, The officers demanded their surrender, and fired shots after them, but the miscreants escaped in the darkness. Inquiries made by police induced them to arrest two young farmers, named Eustace and Crowley respectively, as being the principals in the outrage. The origin of the vendetta against Mrs. M'lnerney is supposed to be the fact that she purchased some hay from a farmer named Cunningham who had been censured by the United Irish League for occupying an evicted tenant's farm.'

The same cablegram had of course been sent to the Age from precisely the same office in London, in precisely the same words, and through precisely the same channel and this is the mutilated and ' expanded ' form in which the great daily did not scruple to present the message to its readers : ' Boycott and murder. — A dastardly outrage. — London, March 10. — An extraordinary agrarian outrage, perpetrated in connection with the boycotting and intimidation tactics of the Irish National League, was on Saturday evening committed at Kilrush, county Clare, on the Shannon. Mr. M'lnerney, a gentleman residing near Kilrush, had purchased some hay from a farmer named Cunningham, who had been ' censured ' (placed under boycott) by the League for occupying a farm from which a former tenant had been evicted. On Saturday evening when Mr. M'lnerney was from home, his wife was in a lighted room with a window facing the road, when three men disguised in masks rode up to the house on horseback and discharged their revolvers through the windows. Mrs. M'lnerney luckily escaped the bullets, and a police constable on patrol, attracted by the firing, hurried to the spot and called upon the " moonlighters ' to surrender. They immediately galloped off, the patrol firing after them, but apparently without effect. Two young farmers of the neighborhood named Eustace and Crowley, both members of the League, have been arrested on suspicion of being participants in the murderous attempt.' In the simple cable as actually sent to both papers there is no mention or suggestion of ' murder ' but the Age boldly flaunts the ugly word in staring head-line and with criminal unscrupulousness thrusts it into the body of the official message itself. The incident throws an interesting light on the way in which ' Irish crime ' is manufactured for the public and shows how well-founded is our repeated warning to our readers not to give any credence at all to cablegrams of the sort until full information is to hand from a trustworthy source.