Is Slugger O’Toole Biased?

I wrote an opinion piece about the perils and difficulties of blog moderation and praising the ability of the Slugger moderation team to keep the show reasonably civil and on the road for such a long time. A previous forum I am associated with has almost died for lack of good moderation, among many other reasons.

Predictably my Slugger piece attracted a storm of criticism of individual moderating decisions but also complaints about a systematic bias against unionists. There were also complaints about a lack of unionist content in general which struck me as odd given that there are quite a few unionist opinion piece writers on the forum and I couldn’t think of one supporting Sinn Féin despite the fact that it is now the largest party in Ireland, north and south.

There are thousands of comments every week and sometimes every day and I don’t know the political leanings of the vast majority. It is however possible to look back on the last 100 stories or so and categorise them as broadly unionist, nationalist, or other, and those not dealing with political issues, or at least the constitutional question at all.

Opinion piece writers rarely reveal any specific party leanings but generally have no difficulty acknowledging that they come from a unionist, nationalist, or other background. Their background doesn’t always dictate their political leanings however, and most are explicit about saying so. Where their pieces are specifically relevant to the constitutional question, I have used their political leaning rather than their background to categorise their opinion pieces.

But that still leaves us with some categorisation difficulties. Our esteemed editor, Mick Fealty, comes from a broadly nationalist background, but devotes most of his political pieces to criticising nationalism, or at least some nationalists, principally Sinn Féin. Andy Pollak comes from a northern unionist and European background but supports a united Ireland (with many caveats) despite devoting most of his pieces to criticising nationalists, north and south, and particularly Sinn Féin.

I come from a German Lutheran and southern Church of Ireland background but have an abiding fear of extreme nationalism of all stripes, based on the European experience of fascist and nationalist wars. My support for a united Ireland is based entirely on the EU experience of bringing many nations and peoples together in political, economic, and social cooperation rather than rivalry or war.

So, for the purposes of this analysis, I have included Mick, Andy, and myself in the “Other” category as I doubt any of us would be voting for Sinn Féin or hard line unionist parties any time soon. Also included were some opinion pieces by Arnold Carton, Obelisk and Brian Walker although some of their pieces were arguably from a unionist or nationalist perspective.

However, most of the opinion pieces on Slugger aren’t about Irish/northern Irish politics at all, though they many have political implications – e.g. stories about difficulties in the health service. I’ve categorised these as non-political unless they specifically argue that the best solution would be a change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland.

Arguments about law and order, taxation, and public expenditure and services are the bread and butter of most democracies, not specifically Irish or British, and therefore can’t be put into a specifically unionist or nationalist category, although they may reflect a left/right divide as in many other countries.

The same goes for opinion pieces on politics or issues outside Ireland, even if nationalists and unionists often take opposing sides on conflicts such as Israel/Palestine or by supporting Republicans or Democrats in the USA.

Brian O’Neill specialises in putting up short discursive pieces linking to stories in the media that he thinks Slugger readers might like to read or discuss. I haven’t done an analysis, but they seem to come from a wide variety of sources, and he doesn’t take a specifically unionist or nationalist view of them. So, I have created a special category of News just for him!

I had to create more categories for content which seemed quite distinctive – Editorial, for Slugger Team Pronouncements; Analytical/Historic, for some excellent contributions by Michael Hehir, David McCann, Philip McGuinness and Alan Meban; and Religious, for two contributions by Andy Boal and Colm Ó’Cionnaith.

This leaves me with the following categories for analysing opinion piece son Slugger: Unionist; Nationalist; Other (within an NI political context); outside NI/international; News; Editorial (Slugger Team); Analytical/History; and Religious. Looking at the last 100 Opinion pieces published (excluding open threads) yields the following result:

Unionist: 6

Nationalist 1

Other 15

Non Political 21

Outside NI/international 13

News (Brian) 35

Editorial (Slugger Team) 4

Analytical/historic 4

Religious 2

I have to say the results surprised me. Most of the contributions are not about politics at all although some of these may have a political angle. There is a good sprinkling of content related to outside Northern Ireland but hardly any from an explicitly nationalist perspective. Sinn Féin are not represented at all, but neither are smaller parties like the Greens, People before profit, Aontú or various loyalist groups.

My impression of Slugger as a broadly centrist site has therefore been confirmed, but Slugger is about a lot more than politics, and the constitutional question is only rarely addressed directly. Of course, it is possible to categorise the above stories differently and you would have to go back a lot further than the last 100 stories to get a statistically accurate sample of the history of Slugger as a whole.

I’m not aware of any editorial policy to exclude Sinn Féin or loyalist authors and as far as I know Slugger will accept any well written, non-libellous content from any source. Anyone who does present a very partisan or contentious viewpoint can expect a robust interrogation, but the moderation team are generally very much on the ball.

In any case, I am very grateful to have such a vibrant forum to write for, even if some of my contributions have raised the ire of some commentators. Jaw jaw, as they say, is always preferable to war.

Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.