Geary, Francis (‘Frank’) Joseph (1891–1961), journalist and newspaper editor, was born 2 August 1891 in Kilkenny city, youngest son of Patrick Geary – grocer, GAA stalwart, and supporter of C. S. Parnell (qv) – and Margaret Geary (née Tobin) of King St., Kilkenny. Educated at the CBS Kilkenny, he started as a journalist on the Kilkenny People before transferring to the Midland Tribune (Birr) and subsequently to the Nationalist and Leinster Times (Carlow). In 1922 he joined the Irish Independent as a staff reporter. Told to cover the civil war in Cork, he had to sail via Liverpool because all roads were blocked, but was then the first to get news out of Cork. Thereafter he chronicled the major events that shaped 1920s Ireland; among his best work were his pieces on Danish agriculture (1925), the Drumcollogher cinema fire (1926), and the western fishing disaster (1927), when over fifty fishermen perished in storms off the coast of Mayo and Galway. Rewarded with rapid promotion, he became a sub-editor in 1927, assistant editor in 1931, and editor (1935–61).
Geary was a devout catholic, and under his editorship the Irish Independent had an aura of piety. It was the only newspaper to send journalists to cover pilgrimages to Lourdes and to publish episcopal Easter messages in full. The arrival of the papal legate, Lorenzo Cardinal Lauri, for the 1932 eucharistic congress was heralded as ‘the greatest welcome in Irish history’. Alone among the metropolitan dailies, the Irish Independent took a strongly pro-Franco line during the Spanish civil war, and made much of atrocities by republican forces against priests and nuns. On the eve of the second world war it published a pamphlet: ‘This is what the Irish Independent told the people about Russia – extracts from leading articles 1919–39’. During the ‘mother and child’ controversy of 1951 the paper maintained an unexpected silence and did not take the opportunity to support the bishops; this was presumably because the paper's co-proprietors, the Chance family, had befriended the orphaned Noel Browne (qv) and supported him through university. On all other occasions Geary toed the church line. Apparently his proudest moment was the pope's telegram on his silver jubilee as editor in 1960: ‘The Holy Office sends fraternal felicitations.’
During Geary's tenure the Irish Independent was frequently termed a Cumann na nGaedheal or Fine Gael paper; it was also described as ‘the non-party organ of business interests in the country’ (Brown, 49). It supported the catholic middle classes and commercial groupings; in so far as it identified Cumann na nGaedheal (and later Fine Gael) with these interests, it was supportive, but could turn critical if threatened. It was initially highly wary of, even alarmed by, Fianna Fáil, which it saw as appealing to workers and small farmers and threatening the middle classes. For the 1932 election Geary mounted what Conor Cruise O'Brien (writing under a pseudonym in The Bell in 1945) called a campaign of admirable technical competence against Fianna Fáil. The paper counterpointed alarmist foreign news – ‘Communist republic declared in Spain!’ – with home news – ‘General election campaign: minister on peril of communism!’, so that the association ‘Fianna Fáil – communism – danger’ was built up subliminally in readers’ minds. Éamon de Valera (qv) was elected notwithstanding; when Fianna Fáil proved less of a threat than feared, the Irish Independent settled into constant, sometimes flamboyant, but not hard-hitting criticism of the government. It attacked the 1937 draft constitution for giving the president quasi-dictatorial powers and demeaning the role of working women, and misjudged the 1938 treaty port agreement as an instrument to make Ireland an outpost of the British empire. More effectively, Geary jeered at the 1947 electoral amendment bill for increasing the number of dáil deputies (because Fianna Fáil had just suffered heavy election losses) when the population had actually declined since the previous act.
However, Geary liked to affect impartiality, and, stung by de Valera's accusations of bias, he took out his measuring tape to prove that during the 1937 election period, the Irish Independent gave Fianna Fáil fifty-six column inches and Fine Gael fifty-seven, while the Irish Press gave Fianna Fáil ninety-two and Fine Gael only eighteen. He later criticised the government's 1958 white paper Programme for economic expansion (also called the First programme) as too ambitious, but he hailed T. K. Whitaker's Economic development, which provided the basis for the programme, as masterly.
Geary was also motivated in his early attacks on Fianna Fáil by his rivalry with the de Valera-controlled Irish Press, established in 1931. Although the Irish Independent remained the largest-selling Irish newspaper, it had dropped in circulation a year after the Irish Press was founded. After the 1933 finance act, which imposed duty on daily imported papers (thus drastically cutting sales of English papers), the Irish Independent settled down to a circulation of about 140,000 as against the Irish Press's 104,000. By 1953 this had risen to 203,000 and 198,000 respectively. In terms of advertising share the Irish Independent did even better, since it gave more space to advertisements and had a virtual monopoly on promotions by the church and certain businesses. Shareholders’ dividends rose from 7.5 per cent in 1933 to 22.5 per cent in 1940.
The paper's success was due in large part to the excellence of its news service. It was frequently first with all the major stories. Geary was a newshound of the old school, who prided himself on comprehensiveness and accuracy. On cultural matters the paper was self-censoring, warning its writers not to review a book that contained objectionable matter; but it chafed against the censorship of news imposed during the war, and on 20 January 1941 accused the censorship office of bias and of exceeding its powers by issuing unauthorised orders. On one occasion it even resorted to publishing blank pages where its editorial had been censored. Perhaps to compensate for this paucity of wartime news, Geary commissioned a series of lengthy articles on foreign diplomats and consuls in Dublin from the Dutch journalist Kees van Hoeh. These were subsequently collected into a book, Diplomats in Dublin (1943).
Geary retired in September 1961 and was made editorial adviser to Independent Newspapers, but had not long to enjoy this position. On 28 November he was made a knight of the Order of St Sylvester, but he died three weeks later on 21 December 1961 in a Dublin nursing home, and was buried in Deansgrange cemetery, leaving estate valued at £8,038.
He married (4 September 1940) Maureen Catherine, daughter of Thomas O'Reilly of Ardamagh, Kilmainham Wood, Co. Meath; they had a daughter and three sons (one of whom became Professor Patrick T. Geary of NUI, Maynooth) and lived at 28 Claremont Road, Sandymount, Co. Dublin.