De Valera, Fianna Fail and the Irish Press: The Truth in the News?

The relationship between the Fianna Fail party and the Irish Press , both founded by Eamon de Valera in an era of political revolution, has been much misunderstood. Blamed for causing the bitter civil war and isolated in its aftermath by the political establishment, de Valera took what seemed the only course of action and founded his own political party and newspaper. The Irish Press gave voice to de Valera’s vision for Ireland and Irishness, and defended it from its detractors, namely the Fine Gael party, providing him with a means to counter hostility in the media, orchestrated by the Irish Independent and Irish Times . This text covers the war of words between the two papers, their fight for rural readership. It explores the possibility of the Irish Press being de Valera, rather than, party-dominated and analyses the disintegration of the relationship between the party and the paper as the de Valera family found itself alienated from the paper’s readers, a modernizing Ireland and a changing Fianna Fail party.