The role of the press in the Easter Rising: ‘Leniency will be taken as an indication of weakness’
IN IRELAND, during 1916, the flow of information and the ability of newspapers to report the news was heavily regulated and constrained by the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA).
At the beginning of the First World War, all the belligerent powers had instituted censorship in an attempt to keep the populations under their control from receiving news that might undermine morale, lower recruitment, or otherwise threaten the war effort. DORA had been enacted in Ireland and Britain between August and November 1914 by the British government of Herbert Asquith and made it a court martial offence to publish “…false reports or reports likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty or to interfere with the success of His Majesty’s forces…”
