Reflections on a year which was bookended by tragedies

World of Politics with Harry McGee

Journalism is not the most upbeat profession in the world. Our stock-in-trade is bad news – of the glass-half-empty variety, with recurring touchstones like concern; crisis; catastrophe; controversy; dispute; criticised; disaster, tragedy, blamed, condemned, demanded, impasse, attacked.

During my own career, I know of two attempts to launch “good news” newspapers: one local and the other national. Both eschewed all the negative miserable stories in favour of reports that stressed positivity and optimism.

Neither lasted very long. People complain about bad news and media organisations all the time. That doesn’t mean their appetite for the miserable news they peddle has diminished in any way.

I was mulling all this stuff around in my head when trying to remember all the things that happened in the political world in 2022. The vast majority were unhappy events, unfortunately. But that is to expected.

And there was enough in politics, and in wider society, to demonstrate manifestly that, when it matters, we are innately decent people.

The year was bookmarked by two terrible events that had a profound impact on people. The first was the killing of the young schoolteacher and musician Aisling Murphy as she jogged on the banks of the Grand Canal near Tullamore.

The other was the ambush earlier this month of Irish soldiers in Lebanon that left one young man, Sean Rooney, dead. Another, Shane Kearney, was critically injured.

Both of those events caused national mourning and reminded people of how innately valuable these young people were and how they contributed for the good of society.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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