I subscribe to two Irish papers, one UK paper, and a weekly newsletter magazine.

So, please, hear me when I say, the opinion pages of the newspapers in Ireland are directly oppositional to the commercial interests of those papers.

They alienate readers.

That’s not to say that opinion pages- as an idea- aren’t a critical part of a newspaper. They’re the bit that give face and voice to its values.

But that means that when people find them violently objectionable, they reject the whole paper and its perceived values.

We actually have a good standard of news coverage from our print media (see our neighbours to the East as a contrasting state of affairs).

But readers see the opinion pages-with its old fashioned ‘contrarians’ and its full-time, Rent a quote silenced voices - as the paper’s soul

Opinion and news are separate in nobody but the minds of the newspaper, as expressions of a paper’s beliefs. They all get paid for in the one transaction. And people will forego one to avoid funding the other if it is inimical to their interests, and sometimes their lives.