Media are biased in their reporting of events in the North

Once again, social media was awash with images of 12th of July bonfires adorned with the flags of the Republic, Gay Pride, Palestine, together with election banners of non-unionist parties.

Others showed lamp posts hung with Union Jacks and Nazi swastikas. Clearly written on one of the tricolours atop a bonfire was ‘We’re not racists – we just don’t want cotton-picking n****rs around here – Keep Antrim Tidy’. Another such depicted a Confederate flag hanging outside the home of a black family in East Belfast. These, for the most part, were at clearly identifiable locations and many of the images were taken from British or Northern papers.

One such, taken at Belfast’s Broadway roundabout, showed a group of masked men armed with clubs in front of a wall, depicting the slogan ‘Taigs will be crucified’.

Once again this year the media in the South has, for the most part, decided not to publish these images, or even to comment on them.

There can be no doubt in any regular reader or viewer’s mind that if the minority ‘tradition’ in the North were to engage in, for example, a ritualistic burning of British flags (say at Easter), our media commentators would be lining up to express their outrage. Is this attitude ‘sectarian’?

Billy Fitzpatrick

Ashfield Park

Terenure

Dublin 6W