Irish Independent

The Irish Independent is an Irish daily newspaper. It is published in both compact and broadsheet sizes. It is the main publication of Independent News and Media. It is also called The Independent or Indo for short.

The Irish Independent was formed in 1905. Before then, there was a paper called Daily Irish Independent. This was an 1890s pro-Parnellite newspaper.

The Irish Independent was launched by William Martin Murphy. He was a controversial Irish nationalist businessman. He was against Charles Stewart Parnell.^[2]

During the 1913 Lockout of workers, Murphy was the leader among the employers. His paper, Irish Independent, published news reports and opinion pieces that were against the workers who were on strike. It wrote that the union's would lose that fight.

The Irish Independent said about the 1916 Easter Rising that it was "insane and criminal". It famously called for the shooting of its leaders.^[3]

In December 1919, during the Irish War of Independence, a group of twenty IRA men destroyed the printing works of the paper. They did this because the paper was not writing good things about the Irish Republican Army. They said the paper was pro-British and had a Unionist stance.

In 1924, the traditional nationalist newspaper, the Freeman's Journal, merged with the Irish Independent.

In the 1970s, it was taken over by former Heinz chairman Tony O'Reilly.

1. ↑ "Irish Newspaper Circulation Jan-June 2019 Island of Ireland Report Print".
2. ↑ Andy Bielenberg, Entrepreneurship, Power, and Public Opinion in Ireland; The career of William Martin Murphy
3. ↑ Easter Rising newspaper archive—from the BBC History website

• Official website