Newspapers showed little sympathy for 1916 leaders

Flawed as modern newspapers may be, historians reflecting on the 1916 Rising have reminded us just how much media has matured in the past 100 years.

In today’s paper, Mark Duncan, co-director of Boston College’s Century Ireland project, describes the shockingly harsh and partisan positions that contemporary newspapers took regarding the leaders of the Rising.

Britain’s Times newspaper – perhaps unsurprisingly – recommended “complete, strong and drastic measures against the insurgents without hesitation ...