Kevin Rafter

Magill was the magazine that held a mirror up to Ireland at its most turbulent. In an era marked by mass unemployment, emigration, ferocious battles over abortion and divorce, and the political duels of Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald, Magill chronicled a country on the brink of profound change. Kevin Rafter uncovers the drama behind the magazine’s creation and survival - from its 1977 launch through its helter-skelter editorial regimes under Vincent Browne, Colm Tóibín, Fintan O’Toole, Brian Trench and John Waters. Drawing on extensive interviews and rich archival material, he reveals how Magill became the publication that, as the Sunday Times claimed, dragged Irish journalism out of 'comfortable, unquestioning dullness', and which the Guardian said wielded political influence unmatched in Britain or Europe. This is not just the story of a magazine - it’s the story of a society in upheaval. To revisit Magill is to witness the unravelling of conservative Catholic Ireland and the rise of a more open, liberal, and diverse nation.

This book examines how election news reporting has changed over the last half century in Ireland by means of a unique dataset involving 25m words from newspapers as well as radio and television coverage. The authors examine reporting in terms of framing, tone and the distribution of coverage.They also focus on how the economy has affected election coverage as well as media reporting of leaders and personalities, gender and the effect of the commercial basis of media outlets. The findings - drawn from a machine learning computer system involving a huge content analysis study - will interest academics as well as politicians and policymakers internationally.

This book examines how election news reporting has changed over the last half century in Ireland by means of a unique dataset involving 25m words from newspapers as well as radio and television coverage. The authors examine reporting in terms of framing, tone and the distribution of coverage.They also focus on how the economy has affected election coverage as well as media reporting of leaders and personalities, gender and the effect of the commercial basis of media outlets. The findings - drawn from a machine learning computer system involving a huge content analysis study - will interest academics as well as politicians and policymakers internationally.

Democratic Left was a small political party which was organised primarily in the Irish Republic but also in Northern Ireland for just short of seven years in the 1990s. Formed out of a split in the Workers' Party in early 1992, Democratic Left was formally disbanded in January 1999 following a merger agreement with the Labour Party. The party - which was led by Proinsais De Rossa, Pat Rabbitte, Eamon Gilmore and Liz McManus - participated in the 1994-97 Rainbow coalition involving Fine Gael and Labour. This book explores the emergence of Democratic Left out of the crisis in communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as continued allegations about their involvement in Official IRA criminality. Issues of ideology and identity, party organisation and political funding are examined in this major study which offers a unique and revealing insight in how politics operates in Ireland today. The book is based on access to internal Democratic Left documentation and papers, and interviews with all leading party members and other figures including Eoghan Harris, Sean Garland, John Bruton and Ruairi Quinn.