Why are the Irish media silent about the persecution of Graham Linehan?

Say nothing! That’s the catch-all phrase of the Irish gombeen man, the shady wheeler-dealer – the one who knows trouble when he sees it but fears the fallout of admitting as much. This is also how much of the Irish media and political class have approached transgenderism, that most 21st-century of sacred cows.

This was brought home once again by the Irish media’s response to the arrest of Graham Linehan in England last week. These so-called journalists love to cloak themselves in a veneer of urbane sophistication, pretending they are too busy with ‘serious issues’ to dirty their hands with what they see as minor culture-war squabbles like Linehan’s stand against trans ideology. But they are fooling no one. This is little more than gombeenism dressed up as sophistication.

Take RTÉ, the Irish public broadcaster. It had this to say about the arrest of Ireland’s most famous comic writer: ‘Graham Linehan has claimed that he was arrested at Heathrow Airport yesterday over social-media posts… In a Substack article, he shared three social-media posts which he claimed had led to his arrest.’ That was it. No mention of the five armed police officers dispatched to meet Linehan off a plane. No hint of the wider debate about British police overreach.

By contrast, the British media had a field day. Prime minister Keir Starmer and health secretary Wes Streeting criticised the heavy-handed display of police power and Streeting even urged the police to focus on ‘policing streets and not tweets’. Several other senior British politicians lined up to call Linehan’s arrest an absurd overreach. Even Elon Musk hopped in, branding Britain a ‘police state’.

Meanwhile, the Irish media were all but mute. Wednesday and Thursday brought the same sterile RTÉ formula – a few lines, a procedural update and little else. By Friday, the omissions were glaring. No mention of the long campaign of targeted complaints from trans activists that has tied Linehan up in legal knots for years. No questioning of whether UK police, averaging 30 arrests a day over social-media posts, have developed an unhealthy zeal for policing speech. And no recognition of the global free-speech movement rallying in Linehan’s defence.

In fact, it wasn’t until Tuesday this week that Hugh Linehan (no relation), the editor of the Irish Times, finally stuck his head above the parapet to criticise Graham Linehan’s arrest.

The irony is that by refusing to cover the bigger story, the Irish media ensured the debate migrated to social media, the very space mainstream pundits most decry. As Eilis O’Hanlon – one of the few outspoken journalists left in Ireland – pointed out, Linehan’s arrest merited just two minutes, buried in the second half of the evening news show, RTÉ News: Six One. Had he been arrested for comments about Israel, it would have led bulletins for days.

Ireland’s political class takes its cue from the media. Asked if Ireland would show the same support for Linehan as it had for Kitty O’Brien, the Irish pro-Palestine activist punched in the face by German police in Berlin, a spokesman for Taoiseach Micheál Martin deflected. He muttered about ‘different laws in different jurisdictions’, pointed back to Martin’s sympathetic call with O’Brien’s mother, and pushed questions about Linehan to the Department of Foreign Affairs. The message was unmistakable. Some causes earn solidarity. Views like Linehan’s do not.

RTÉ has interviewed O’Brien, an unknown activist. Yet not a single Irish outlet has sought an interview with Linehan. One of Ireland’s most successful cultural figures, now at the centre of an international free-speech row, faces a wall of silence. This is no oversight. It is a choice, dressed up as sophistication but rooted in cowardice.

It is worth noting that while Ireland’s elites are very woke, the Irish public are not. When it came to the 2024 referendum on changes to the constitution, which would have redefined ‘family’ and the role of women in the home, the public delivered one of the most overwhelming ‘no’ votes in the history of Irish politics.

The Irish media classes have boxed themselves in. They thought they were being clever by dodging hot-button issues, but after years of silence they are now stuck in a prison of their own making. Jennifer O’Connell, opinion editor of the Irish Times, delivered a masterclass in faux-weary evasion in her weekend column. She half-admitted that Linehan had a point while bending over backwards to parade her woke credentials. Her piece perfectly captured the wider Irish Times posture – a paper that cloaks timidity in the language of gravitas while doing everything possible to avoid making serious points in the difficult debates.

I’ve spoken to countless Irish journalists since I first raised concerns about trans ideology in 2017, and nothing has changed. The majority agree with me but stay quiet because they lack the courage to face down woke disapproval. Others are simply lazy and have not done their homework. The result is always the same – silence. And if they do speak, it is wrapped in the affected irony of the media set. Above all, they never poke the trans-activist bear. They will do whatever it takes to avoid a backlash.

And so Ireland’s media and political class drift on, congratulating themselves on their clever restraint while the public roll their eyes. Everyone knows what is happening. We have been here before – through the Magdalen laundries, through the scandals of clerical abuse, through every dark chapter when silence was chosen over honesty. Saying nothing is not clever. It is the same old Irish solution to an uncomfortable truth.

Stella O’Malley is the director and founder of Genspect