Wisdom beats '˜peace journalism'

He attempts to explain what he means by “peace journalism” and refers in passing to “positive journalism”.

I would have thought that journalism in a democracy is eclectic and wide-ranging.

He says that peace journalism is “about balancing the politics of fear, with the politics of hope”. He could help us by defining what he means by “politics”.

One wonders what the professor’s views would be on “romantic journalism” (I fell in love with a raven-haired Canarian beauty on La Gomera or Bridget, the belle of Ballymurphy, just blew me away).

And then one could have “sociological journalism” (Does Gerry Adams’ concept of truth have totemistic, teleological traits for asymmetric dysfunctionalism in the Tutsi of Rwanda?)

Sinn Fein President Des Dalton has said on the murder of Prison Officer Adrian Ismay: “The issues that caused our conflict have not been addressed.”

The drive for the utopia of an undefined unitary Irish state is a secular ideology corrupted by the threat (latent and overt) of violence.

I would much prefer the wisdom of outstanding journalist and broadcaster Clive James (sadly suffering from terminal illness) when he wrote: “The driving force of any ideology stands revealed: it can’t be coherent without being intolerant.”

The ”shared future” nonsense is a concept manufactured by soiled and stained propagandists (eg. Tony Blair) but perhaps to my jaundiced eye I could seek solace in sociological outpourings of peace journalists drunk on syntax, inebriated with words and bereft of wisdom.

George McNally, Londonderry

Ben Lowry: It is an extraordinary situation that former IRA chiefs can lecture victims