ONE of the Sunday Independent's most senior executives has said the paper "went too far" in the "vindictive nastiness" of its attacks on John Hume during his negotiations with the IRA.
Ed McCann, Deputy Publisher at Independent News & Media, who is originally from Belfast, wrote an opinion column yesterday saying the former SDLP leader's treatment by the paper "undermined sometimes genuine concerns".
An editorial in the same edition admits its analysis written at the time "has not aged well", but adds it was "a period of uncertainty... a time when innocent people were still being murdered and maimed by terrorist organisations like the IRA".
Mr McCann said "one consequence of the backlash against the IRA (continuing campaign of violence) was an undercurrent of resentment among some people in the Republic towards anything to do with the north".
"This sometimes manifested itself in the pages of the Sunday Independent."
Mr McCann added that it had "superlatively over many years" challenged "consensus or assumptions", but "in my view, both at the time and now, however, the paper went too far in its attacks on Hume and some of its coverage seemed to have a vindictive nastiness that undermined genuine concerns".
He described "an undercurrent of antipathy towards northern nationalism of whatever hue, which would grate with me as someone who has worked on both sides of the border throughout my career".
"There was a simplistic view that talking to the IRA meant you were somehow consorting with them, or that nationalists aspirations were somehow illegitimate and that the Republic should have nothing to do with the north - as if the conflict could be hermetically sealed.
"Others will disagree with this analysis, and that is their entitlement."
Editor Alan English said the paper's then claim that its columnists `dissent from Mr Hume's fallible political judgment... (was) part of a healthy democratic debate' was "a stretch" - pointing out that the SDLP's Mark Durkan was refused a right of reply to "an all out attack on Hume mounted by the paper's biggest star writer of the day (Eamon) Dunphy in an incendiary back page piece".
A cartoon accompanying the column was interpreted as showing Mr Hume's hand "stained by blood".
"The paper was absolutely entitled to subject Hume-Adams to plenty of scrutiny at a time when the IRA instilled fear in decent Irish people - but to refuse a platform to a senior SDLP figure who took serious issue with what was being written was an indefensible decision."
Mr English concluded: "Hume, ultimately, was vindicated. Whatever argument there was, he won it. He is widely regarded now as the man who did more than anyone alive or dead to deliver peace in Ireland.
"For that, we are all in his debt."
