Content, Comment and Censorship: A case study comparing coverage of Dunkirk and D-Day in Irish newspapers

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, was committed to war. The independent Irish state, on the other hand, declared neutrality and introduced a particularly vigorous censorship regime designed to ensure that no comment or opinion emanating from its press could possibly be interpreted as contradictory to the state’s neutrality. Historically Irish newspapers had largely relied on common, syndicated news agency material to report international events. Now, for the first time, they operated under two state-backed regimes with markedly different aims for presentation and comment on war news. This article reveals how the differing state-controlled mechanisms operating in Ireland affected the presentation and interpretation of news from common sources, particularly concentrating on the London-based Press Association, of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 and the Allied landings on D-Day in 1944.