Picture by Clinton Global Initiative
It’s not often I find myself in agreement with the Smartest Man in Ireland, but this morning I’ll make an exception: Fintan O’Toole has written an article about Denis O’Brien in today’s Irish Times that is well worth reading.
It raises the topic that is white-hot south of the border at present: Denis O’Brien’s contention that his private financial affairs should not be reported in the media when they’ve been discussed under parliamentary privilege. Fintan’s take on this is that O’Brien has far too much influence/ownership of Irish media at present – Independent Newspapers, Today FM – and has plans to buy up lots more in Ireland and England.
Why should it matter who owns a media outlet? – isn’t it the editor who decides what goes into the paper, not the owner? That’s not how Fintan sees it and neither do I. He cites the case of Eoghan Harris, a man who – how shall I say this – knows his own mind. Apparently Eoghan has written that he thought of writing in the Indo about the owner of the Indo, but then thought again, as what he said could well have cost him.
Fintan declares the matter can be resolved if two things happen: the southern government announces that O’Brien won’t be allowed to expand his already massive media empire; and that “ O’Brien can say publicly that Independent journalists are free, within the law, to write what they like about him.”
That last bit is where Fintan and I part ways. O’Brien could tell his employees until his tongue turned puce that they were free to write what they liked about him, but it would make not a scintilla of difference. There’s a culture within media organisations which encourages people to say certain things, take on certain topics, and to sing dumb and avoid other topics. You might feel noble exposing the scandal of your boss’s excessive media ownership but you’d better be prepared for the impact that will have on your career. You mightn’t be fired but you’ll discover what it is to live in a cold house, be regarded as someone who hadn’t the wit to keep his trap shut. That’s how media organisations work; and Eoghan Harris’s frank concession makes clear what we all really know: you can bite the hand that feeds you but you better get ready for a lifetime of thin gruel thereafter.
Measurable cerebral activity is a prerequisite when perusing the contents of newspapers as we consume products with the prevailing ideologies promoted by captains and the kings. There is the daily drip feed about the machinations of media moguls just as another stealth tax is about to push the flood gates open further given evidence of the lead content in water just announced by Uisce Éireann, which will not run free.
While people were being slaughtered in Vietnam, the Washington Post journalists, Woodward and Bernstein exposed the corruption endemic in the Nixon regime. What can the average wage earner expect to read about in the days and weeks ahead? No doubt the unsuspecting taxpayer will pick up the tab for the next tribunal of inquiry.
‘Eoghan Harris’ frank concession’ – would that be a first in his life.
Apparently the Irish government is planning on clamping down on media monopolies to the extent that no now owner may control no more than 20%.
Good news? Yes and no!
Yes it is good that this will obtain in the future, but any present proprietor controlling more than 20% at the moment (Denis O’Brien) will not be affected.
I would have thought that all other proprietors could object to this as being discriminatory.
But then there is a lot the Irish government does is discriminatory! Irish Water just might be a case in point.
Little need for Freedom-loving Fintan in his weekly Sermon on the Mount, Esteemed Blogmeister, to point out the mote in the eye of Helicopter Harris of the sister paper, The Sunday Dependent..
When under his very own probing proboscis in the underground carport of The Unionist Times there are neat and tidy rows and rows of valet-parked Beamers.
(No, one hasn’t the remotest what a ‘mote’ is either).
Take, for instance, the carnation-pink Beamer of the Religious Correspondent, Archdeacon Patsy McGarry, Bachelor of Arts. In today’s edition he penned a most touching tribute to his late teacher and later Bishop Thomas Flynn of the Diocese of Achonry.
After he had been appointed RC, oops Rel Cor of TUT, the appreciative scribe was ‘always glad we escaped being pitted against each other’ and, furthermore, ‘ during the torrid years of emerging scandals and statutory reports, he was never uneasy or unpleasant’.
Like, when the born Catholic and born-again Christian Patsy ever encountered him.
And there was a puzzled Perkie wondering just how the, erm, ‘torrid scandal’ which emerged in the last few days from the Methodist Church on our nearest neighbouring island had gone unremarked by the ever-alert Archdeacon McGarry.
One is wiser now. (Memo to self: must not rush to judgement. Not least where the Rel Cor of TUT and official non-bog-standard biographer of Mother Mary McAleese is concerned.)
Consider next the Beamer in the distinctive racing colours / silks of the Queen Mum: purple and scarlet with gold braiding and a black roof where a jockey’s cap should be.
This of course is the vehicle belonging to the Horsey Hack named Brian O’Connor. This Trilby-hatted scribe has some form in his clubable Monday column.It is not so long ago since he developed an acute case of equine colic.
This was as a result of his reading about the Hurling Club in Dungiven, County Londonderry / Cumann Iomanaiochta Chaoimhin Ui Loingsigh which was (gasp) called after the hunger striker name of Kevin Lynch.
Talk about rolled-brolly rhetoric and the sound it might make on reinforced concrete GAH heads: Whack ! Whack ! Whack !
Strange, indeed, how the name of a common or garden errorist can wreak such havoc on an equitable hack’s horse box, where the roll call of genocidal gerontocracy associated with the, erm, Sport of Kings causes nothing more knife-edgy than a stifled yawn.
Yesterday, BOC was at it again: fetlocking the GAH. in the hollyhocks. It must be all of a fortnight since he last did it. So, he was surely overdue another go.
What was causing him to splinter his horsebox this time was the sloshing around of dosh in – gosh ! – the Grab All Association. Now, Perkie in his disinterested innocence would have thought that the Booytful Game had a rather bigger claim on the finishing-post binoculars of BOC.Not to mention a b. claim on the cherished cognomen of the Grab All Association.
Take Bohemians FC, for whose derelict ground Dalymount the (gulp )Dublin City Council has dug deep into its municipal pockets to purchase the venue for 3.8 mill. Which tidy wee sum goes straight into helping to pay off Bohs’ NouCamp-sized debt.
Neatly announced under the radar just as the FAI-lures were in the spotlight for faffing with FiFA.
Yes, the same compassionate Dublin City Council which put the kibosh on a series of bog-standard concerts last year out of an emphatic empathy for the sensitives for the fragile local residents of Croak Park.
So, now. Are not the local residents of Dalymount equally worthy of the consideration of BOC? Or rather Nightlymount as some prefer to call it. Unlike, the bogballers and stickfighters of Croak Park the, erm, Gypsies of Bohemians FC tend to take their lead from their rolemodels across the water in the Third Division (South).
This involves keeping the local residents guessing on a weekly (sometime bi-weekly) basis as regards which night or nights they will play their games. It is not that the roar of the crowd will prove disruptive of their domestic lives bur rather the Anabolic steroid-fed Fields of Athenry on the annoying Tannoy.
More Forelock, that Shylock, one senses.
And as for BOC’s rather bockety sense of perspective compelling him to train the eye beady in the direction of the Established Sport of Egg-chasing in the hallowed pages of The Unionist Times: fur-geddit !
Fact is, much to the melancholy despair of an undertanding Perkie, the purchased press on Liffeyside are as about as free as (gulp) the free birds high over Athenry are from the tortured tonsils of a tippler in a Dublin pub on an average Friday night.
Fact is
A gilt-edged rule learned in Infant School
By thoroughbred, donkey as well as mule
Once you’re bought
You gotta kiss butt
He who pays the arse-wiper calls the Toole.