Cork's papers during the War of Independence: From the front page to the front line

Niall Murray delves into a book that charts sabotages, shootings and shortages in the Cork papers doing the War of Independence 

Linotype machines and printing presses at the offices of the Cork Examiner were wrecked by Republican forces during the Civil War in August 1922.

Anti-Treaty forces’ destruction of the Cork Examiner and Cork Constitution offices two days before doing the same to military buildings as they urgently evacuated the city in August 1922 underlines the strategic importance of controlling the press during a war.

Alan McCarthy makes this observation on the Irish Civil War near the end of his new book on journalism and its practitioners in Cork during a decade of revolution. The pen may be mightier than the sword, he says, but military forces will sometimes turn their weapons on the printing presses.