Kevin Myers has been fired from the Sunday Times over anti-Semitic remarks he made in a column yesterday concerning the salaries of BBC presenters Vanessa Feltz and Claudia Winkleman.
He was also criticised for the "misogynistic tone" of the article, which implied that men work harder than women.
Kate Shanahan, head of journalism at DIT, said she "couldn't believe it" when she read the article and questioned the wisdom of publishing it:
"The things that stood out were the claims that women don't work as hard as men, and the idea that a response to a demand for equal pay for equal work was met in this particular way."
"I couldn't quite see the logic behind the column. I was offended on a personal basis and my first question was, how did this happen in the first place?"
"If you employ a controversialist, that's what you expect to get from them. As a newspaper you're left looking at the fall-out from that."
Irish Times columnist Una Mullally added: "I think there's something deeper going on. We know that this is not a mistake - the tone of the article was very misogynistic as well as anti-Semitic. We know Kevin Myers has form in doing that and has previously said he's a Holocaust denier."
"It doesn't have anything to do with respectful discourse. It's not about being precious or easily offended, it's about what is acceptable to say. It's no wonder a lot of people denigrate journalism when you have this kind of nonsense in newspapers."
Claire Fox, libertarian writer and founder of the Institute of Ideas, said that while she disagreed with Myers' comments on women, she was wary of over-censoring people's views.
"I was surprised it got through any kind of editorial, but I get nervous about it being sanitised discourse."
"The term racism is now widely used to silence people. I'm no great supporter of shock-jock journalism, but I think that whilst there are those journalists in existence, there's a much broader range of views that are being closed down all the time."
