FOLLOW IT THROUGH: CHALLENGE TO FINTAN O’TOOLE’S COLUMN IN THE IRISH TIMES: ‘THE THREE ANTI-VACCINE TYPES – EGOISTS, PARANOIACS AND FASCISTS’ .
We refer to our post of 19th December and the complaint to the Irish Times about Fintan O’Toole’s Opinion Column published on 11th December.
We have received queries from people who lodged the complaint but have not yet received a response from the Editor.
The next step to take is to issue a complaint with the Press Ombudsman if no response is received within fourteen days from the date the complaint was lodged with the Irish Times. A complaint can can be made about any article published within the last three months that personally affects you and has been published by a member publication of the Press Council of Ireland if it breaches the Press Council’s Code of Practice.
You can make your complaint in writing either by email (info@pressombudsman.ie) by post (Office of the Press Ombudsman, 3 Westland Square, Pearse Street, Dublin, D02 N567) or via the online complaint form which you can access at www.presscouncil.ie.
We are of the opinion that is fundamental that people take direct collective action at a grass-roots level against the discrimination, persecution, segregation and vilification of the unvaccinated by the mainstream media.
In our post on 16th November we discussed the normalisation of the ‘dehumanisation’ of the unvaccinated in society whereby people are no longer portrayed as human beings by the media. If we do not continually strive to challenge such negative portrayals of the unvaccinated, we risk further persecution of a minority in our community.
A study by the University of Sheffield (Heywood, E et al ‘How Palestinian students invoke the category ‘human’ to challenge negative treatment and media representations’ Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 2018) referred to ‘dehumanisation’ as a process:
‘….where human characteristics are removed from groups of people, so that they can be viewed as less than people, which can form the basis for the degrading treatment of people’.
The ‘unvaccinated’ are individual human beings. Each unvaccinated person has a name and story of why they cannot or choose not to take the vaccine.
Collectively it is our moral, ethical and moral duty to continue to do our utmost to challenge such negative portrayals of the unvaccinated by the media as otherwise we could witness the unravelling and destruction of the entire social fabric of Irish society at an accelerated pace.Collectively we must continually strive to do all in our power to hold those responsible to account.
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