A conservative media outlet in Ireland has become the latest lightning rod for populist concerns about free speech that have exposed stark divisions between Europe and the United States in the era of President Donald Trump.
Gript, a news site known for its conservative stances on culture war issues such as mass immigration and political correctness, announced this week that Irish police last year obtained a court order to access private messages and IP addresses associated with its X account.
Gript, which purports to cover the news without the “liberal filter”, called the move an “intolerable” and “egregious” attack on privacy and media freedom.
Elon Musk’s X, which said it successfully challenged the court order, shared Gript’s statement, which was widely amplified by conservative, populist and far-right accounts on the platform in and outside Ireland.
Gript’s announcement came days after US Vice President JD Vance thrust the issues of free speech, censorship and immigration in Europe into the spotlight with a blistering speech that roiled transatlantic relations and energised the political right on the continent and beyond.
What exactly happened?
On Tuesday, Gript released a statement saying that police had sought access to its communications on X as part of investigations into violent protests that took place in April at the site of planned accommodation for asylum seekers.
Gript, which also published what it said was a copy of the court order, had published footage of the protests in Newtownmountkennedy, a town about 40km (25 miles) south of Dublin, including scenes of violent clashes between police and demonstrators.
Gript’s footage of the protests, during which six people were arrested, included video appearing to show police using pepper spray against one of its journalists among other confrontations between officers and members of the public.
Gript said that it was given no opportunity to challenge An Garda Siochana, the name of Ireland’s police force, over its application to access its communications or the resulting court order.
The outlet said it only learned that police had sought access to its communications after being informed by X.
According to the court order published by Gript, a judge determined there were “reasonable grounds” to believe footage published by the outlet on X contained evidence of criminal offences.
In a follow-up video, Gript editor John McGuirk said police had used a law originally introduced to combat drug dealers and “terrorists” to target his outlet on the “very flimsy pretext” that it might have evidence “connecting somebody somewhere” to crimes.
“In journalism, it is very important to defend your sources, to defend your readers and to defend the rights of those who work for you, up and until the point of going to prison, which I am prepared to do if necessary,” McGuirk said in his video statement.
McGuirk said that the police ultimately dropped their bid without gaining access to his outlet’s private messages and other data after X successfully challenged the move in court.
Gript did not respond to a request for comment from Al Jazeera.
What are the Irish police saying?
In a statement to Al Jazeera, An Garda Siochana said it does not comment on the comments of third parties or ongoing investigations but acknowledged the court order.
“In order to vindicate the rights of potential victims of crime including Gardai [police officers] who have been verbally and physically assaulted, An Garda Siochana has a positive obligation to obtain all available evidence relating to particular incidents,” a spokesperson said.
An Garda Siochana said the decision of whether or not to issue a court order is a matter for the independent judiciary and that it takes the “protection of the right of journalists to report freely and in safety very seriously”.
An Garda Siochana did not respond to a question about whether it had sought the communications of other media organisations or journalists.
What is the connection with Vance’s claims about free speech in Europe?
Conservative and far-right figures in and outside Ireland have highlighted the case as an example of what Vance claimed was Europe’s retreat from its “fundamental values,” including free speech.
Gript itself has sought to draw a link, with McGuirk saying his run-in with the authorities fit “very well” into the themes of the US vice president’s speech.
“I think it was timely that he made it just as the consequences of the very issues he was talking about were coming home for us,” McGuirk said in his video statement.
Harry Browne, a journalism lecturer at Technological University Dublin, said that the case involving Gript raises legitimate concerns, but questioned the attempts to link it to Vance’s criticisms of Europe’s speech restrictions.
“It is concerning but not surprising that they used this particular ‘back-door’ tool of going through the platform, and it’s likely Twitter [the former name for X] was not alone,” Browne told Al Jazeera, referring to the police’s application to access private messages on X and suggesting other social media platforms may have been similarly targeted.
“It bears no relation whatsoever to the European digital censorship regime,” Browne said, arguing that, despite Vance’s complaints, restrictions on speech in Europe are more likely to target figures on the political left, such as pro-Palestinian and antiwar activists, than those on the right.
In his withering speech to the Munich Security Conference last Friday, Vance said that Europe faced a greater threat “from within” than from China or Russia.
“I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, ‘hateful content’,” Vance said.
“Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, ‘combating misogyny on the internet’.”
Vance’s speech received a cool response in Europe, whose governments have traditionally taken a more proactive role in cracking down on hate speech than the US.
Unlike the US, where the First Amendment of the constitution limits legal restrictions on expression, the European Union has long criminalised hate speech related to characteristics such as race, colour, religion and national origin.
Individual member states also have their own anti-hate speech laws.
Under the EU’s landmark Digital Services Act passed in 2022, the bloc also operates a code of conduct for platforms to counter hate speech online, which includes a commitment to “undertake best efforts to review at least two-thirds” of content brought to their notice within 24 hours.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took particular umbrage at Vance’s suggestion that Germany’s mainstream political parties should drop their opposition to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) entering government.
“There can therefore be no reconciling a commitment to ‘never again’ with support for the AfD,” Scholz said, using a common slogan associated with the lessons of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
“That is why we will not accept outside observers acting on behalf of this party, interfering with our democracy and our elections and influencing the democratic formation of opinions. That is bad manners – especially among friends and allies.”
While Vance singled out a number of countries for castigation, including Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom – highlighting, among other cases, the prosecution of a British man who breached a ‘safe access zone’ to conduct a silent vigil outside an abortion clinic – he did not mention Ireland by name.
Vance, however, has raised concern about free speech in Ireland specifically before.
As a US Senator in 2023, Vance wrote to Ireland’s ambassador to the US to express concern that a hate speech bill under consideration by the Irish parliament would “chill important public debate”.
The Irish government last year announced it would not go forward with the plans amid criticism from some opposition parties and a number of other prominent figures on the American right, including tech billionaire Musk and President Trump.
Fergal Quinn, a lecturer in journalism at the University of Limerick, said that while he does not believe Vance has much credibility on free speech since the Trump administration appears to only be interested in protecting speech that serves its agenda, his criticisms contain a “grain of truth”.
“The free speech versus hate speech debate has always been a tricky balance to get right,” Quinn told Al Jazeera.
“The law in this area is far from perfect and needs constant refinement, but the free-for-all on the likes of X that has resulted from Musk’s relaxation of moderation is a catastrophic step backwards in terms of disinformation and polarisation in the public sphere.”
What has the reaction been in Ireland?
While An Garda Siochana’s actions have been criticised in conservative circles, including in the US, the case has received relatively little mainstream attention in Ireland.
Most of the Irish media – including national broadcaster RTE and leading newspapers The Irish Times and The Irish Independent – have not reported on the case even as it has attracted significant attention on conservative and far-right social media and media platforms.
The National Union of Journalists, which advocates for media freedom in Ireland, has not released a statement and declined to comment when contacted by Al Jazeera.
The muted reaction in Ireland may be due to Gript’s polarising nature in a country where consensus-based politics is the norm and right-wing populist and far-right groups have made few inroads relative to other Western countries.
Gript covers the news through an unabashedly conservative lens and has been strongly critical of the scale of the Irish government’s intake of asylum seekers and its liberal positions on cultural issues such as abortion and transgender rights.
On its website, it pitches itself as an alternative for readers concerned about the “headlong rush to the most extreme forms of liberalism, facilitated by the stifling of any real debate.”
Before entering journalism, McGuirk was involved in a number of centre-right political parties and helped lead campaigns opposing abortion and greater integration with the EU.
The outlet has been criticised over the accuracy of some of its coverage.
In 2023, it removed an article that erroneously linked an Algerian asylum seeker to a stabbing attack on three children and a teacher outside a Dublin school.
The man, who was not named in the article but was identified on social media through details about his asylum history, is currently suing Gript for defamation.
A 2023 study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that describes its mission as countering “extremism, hate and disinformation”, described Gript as a “prominent entity within the Irish mis- and disinformation ecosystem” that had a record of failing to correct “false and misleading content” about immigration.
Gript has denied espousing far-right views and last year successfully argued in a complaint to the Press Council of Ireland that an article that accused the outlet of being “racist” and “stirring up hatred against immigrants” had failed to meet the industry code’s standards of accuracy.
“Gript is an unpopular and problematic news organisation that has repeatedly skirted the line in terms of hate speech as it has sought – with limited success so far – to ride the wave of growth in right-wing politics across the world,” Quinn, from the University of Limerick, said.
“I would not say it is wrong about every issue it pushes, but I would say it is not credible.”
Still, Quinn said it is concerning “in principle” for police to target a media operation regardless of its credibility.
“There is a history in Ireland of Gardai using their powers excessively in these areas and in broad terms whereby freedom of speech is sometimes a principle that is grudgingly allowed rather than rigorously upheld,” he said.
Tom Felle, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Galway, voiced similar concerns.
“Media freedom is a fundamental pillar of any democracy, and the threshold for breaching that freedom should be extremely high,” Felle told Al Jazeera.
“Such actions should only occur in the rarest of circumstances and when absolutely necessary in the public interest.”
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