Greenslade ‘at best hypocritical’ in his approach to Máiría Cahill, says editor
FORMER Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said Roy Greenslade had demonstrated hypocrisy and a lack of transparency about his support for the Real IRA while writing for the newspaper.
During Mr Rusbridger’s editorship, Mr Greenslade attacked the credibility and motives of IRA rape victim Máiría Cahill as she waived her anonymity to speak publicly in a 2014 BBC documentary.
“Given his own lack of transparency, that was, at best, hypocritical,” wrote Mr Rusbridger in an article on the Guardian website.
He apologised to Ms Cahill, writing: “I am sincerely sorry to Máiría Cahill, both for the article and for the upset it must have caused her.”
However, in the piece addressing Mr Greenslade’s influence at the Guardian, his former editor insisted that “in one sense, this is all a red herring. Greenslade had no role at all in Guardian editorial conferences and wrote not a single Guardian leader on Northern Ireland”.
Mr Greenslade resigned last week as Professor of Journalism at City University London after confessing to his admiration for the IRA.
In a column for the British Journalism Review, he disclosed his support for the IRA and admitted writing articles under a pseudonym for the republican paper An Phoblacht.
Over the weekend, attention turned to the appointment here
of Mr Rusbridger to the Future of Media Commission by the Taoiseach’s Department. Several politicians including Senator Regina Doherty and Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea questioned his continuing role on the committee, given the revelations.
“If he does not have the decency to offer his resignation, then the Taoiseach should step in and get rid of him,” said Mr O’Dea.
Ms Cahill has also written to Taoiseach Micheál Martin demanding he review the appointment of the former Guardian editor.
“Alan Rusbridger should have stepped in and not allowed Roy Greenslade to attack my credibility and demonise me,” she said.
Mr Rusbridger says Mr Greenslade’s nationalist leanings were “no secret” but that he felt “let down” following the revelation last week about his support for the IRA’s campaign of violence.
“I am not alone among his former editors and colleagues in feeling let down by Greenslade for leaving it until his retirement to place on public record his sympathies for the armed struggle,” wrote Mr Rusbridger.
He said both the Guardian and Mr Greenslade have also apologised to Ms Cahill.
However, Ms Cahill last night tweeted that Mr Greenslade had not apologised to her.
Frustrate
Mr Rusbridger also wrote: “I will make no apologies for the Guardian’s role in, correctly, believing that peace was possible at a time when many not only doubted it but worked actively to frustrate the attempts to achieve it.
Mr Rusbridger said that in covering stories about Sinn Féin and the formative moves towards the peace process, he as editor “repeatedly took every opportunity I had to check that we were not acting naively”.
Meanwhile, Mr Greenslade has denied passing sensitive information to the IRA while a senior member of staff at the Sunday Times.
“I categorically deny passing any information to the IRA at any time. I didn’t have any information to pass on. I was an intellectual supporter, not a practical one,” he said, adding he was not “privy to any classified information”.