That's a good one.
The Times started off as a Protestant Nationalist Newspaper, but once it was bought by the Arnott family (of Arnott's dept store fame) in 1873 it became overtly and unashamedly Unionist in its editorial line. It called for the execution of the leaders of the Rising in 1916, took a pro-Treaty and pro-CnaG line in the 20's and opposed De Valera's policy of neutrality in WWII. Fair enough you might say, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
A more sinister element came into play in 1962 however, when the paper was taken over by a certain Major Thomas Bleakly McDowell, an ex-British army officer from Belfast who had served in WWII and later became a lawyer. The following year, the Major appointed Douglas Gageby, a Dublin-born Protestant educated at Belfast Royal Academy and TCD, as editor. Gageby got the Major's back up with his moderately liberal editorial line on the Civil Rights Movement in NI, and in 2003 it emerged that the British Foreign Office had made a bit of a boo-boo in neglecting to destroy a certain communication sent by the British Ambassador in Dublin to his superiors in London regarding a conversation he had had with the Major regarding his rogue editor, to whom McDowell had referred as "a white nigger" in need of some "guidance" on the Civil Rights question.
When the document was released under the FOI act, it was discovered by an Irish historian who brought it to the attention of the Irish Times, who refused to publish the story. The Independent were less reluctant. The times ran with the story the next day and published a denial from the elderly Major a few days later, claiming that he had never used the words "white nigger" in his life. Major McDowell transferred the ownership of the Times to a trust in 1974, making himself "President For Life". A few years later he adjusted the rules governing the trust to ensure he could never be ousted from his position as director and chief executive of the paper. He remained a director of the company until 2001, and, naturally, President of the trust until his death in 2009.
Even without this evidence, it's hard to see how a paper like the Irish Press, which had the highest circulation of all the national newspapers for a sustained period, could fail while the Times managed to turn a very healthy profit with a much smaller readership. Were they being propped up by something other than sales and advertising revenue? Who knows.
The surprising thing is that many people dismiss this and don't believe that the British interfered with public opinion in Ireland. The reality is that you would have to question the competence of an Intelligence Service that wasn't doing all it could to influence the mass media in a population traditionally hostile to its interests in the North at a particularly turbulent time in our history.
