Controlled Access. Restriction lift date: 2034-12-31
As others saw us: the French grand reporter on the island of Ireland in the 20th century
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Date
2023
Authors
O'Hanlon, Oliver
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
This thesis analyses how the political perception of Ireland evolved in France during the course of the twentieth-century. It looks at the work of a number of grand reporter journalists from five different French newspapers who reported on Ireland at times of conflict in the twentieth-century. The two seminal periods of conflict in Irish history, the War of Independence and the violent sectarian conflict which lasted for almost thirty years, known colloquially as the “Troubles”, attracted unprecedented media attention from the world’s press. In this source-driven longue durée study of newspaper articles produced by the grands reporters journalists, I show how the form of writing that they produced, grand reportage, evolved over time. It moved from an entertaining and engaging style of writing that was primarily aimed at attracting the reader’s attention and making them buy the next day’s newspaper, in much the same way that the roman-feuilleton was used in a previous generation, to more of an accurate reflection of what was happening on the ground in Ireland. During the Troubles, grands reporters did not need to add any of the Gothic style elements that their confreres would have used in the 1920s to add an air of mystery to the first-person narrative in order to make it as interesting as possible. This transformation in the form of grand reportage was driven by changes in media practise which were prompted by competition from other forms of media. Grand reportage was no longer being used to boost newspaper sales but remained a feature of the French press and was used to boost a newspaper’s credibility, as we see in the case of a new newspaper, Libération, that chose to report from Ireland and other locations around the world to show that it was willing and able to compete with more established newspapers. I show how the political perception of Ireland in France shifted from one of a peripheral land or romanticised exotic L’île verte that was locked in seemingly intractable conflict, to one of a modern outward-looking state that was a peer with France through their common membership of the European Union.
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Controlled Access
Keywords
Grand reporter , Journalism , France , Ireland , Media , Newspaper
Citation
O'Hanlonr, O. 2023. As others saw us: the French grand reporter on the island of Ireland in the 20th century. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.