A week or two I read about this address by Gemma O’Doherty on the state of the Irish media. (I’m hoping I haven’t blogged on it already.) But the fact that Roy Greenslade in the Guardian reports her words in the favourable way he does testifies to the worth of her thinking.
I don’t agree with everything she says – for example, her take in The Irish Times (are you listening, Perkin?) and on The Sunday Times. And just because Tony O’Reilly wasn’t Denis O’Brien doesn’t make him a good person. Some of us remember the kind of columns that were written when he was captain of the Indo ship.
That said, I think this is worth a careful read – and I’d be interested in your reaction to the linked righttoknow.ie proposals. We pay far too little attention to how the media frames political debate in Ireland. It’s time we woke up and spoke out.
I was astonished at the time Gemma O’Doherty was summarily dumped from her job in the Indo, obviously due to political/Garda pressure.
Newspapers in the Republic of Ireland have traditionally been bastions of the NUJ, so what has changed over the years.
Had Gemma’s job been threatened years ago the union would have backed her to the hilt, and all journalists, not only on her newspaper, but on others, would have taken decisive industrial action to prevent this assault on investigative journalism.
Can the Indo be so riddled with the likes of anti-trade union Ruth Doddery Edwards, Jim Cusack and Eoghan Harris, that the union has lost all moral authority?
That must be the case or else Gemma would still be secure in her Indo job.
A sad day for Irish journalism, Ireland, and of course the evil hand of Denis O’Brien is apparent!
Deed and I am listening, Esteemed Blogmeister. Nothing that one cannot overlook. Indeed, if anything, it serves to enhance the main trust of her address on the dismal state of the media in general in the abysmal Free Southern Stateen
Bearing in mind what Robert Herrick’s brother Eric wrote some time ago, back in the 17th century:
-A sweet disorder in her address
Kindles a kind of wanting more, not less.
The least one can say about the, erm, dichotomy between Tony O’Reilly and Denis O’Brien is that truly has it contributed immensely to the gaiety of the Staiety.
The hilarious spectacle of one media Maximalist morphing into a Minimalist and the glorious anticipation of observing the second media Maximalist inevitably downsizing in the same way, is truly not for the quaint hearted.
One can almost close one’s eyes at this moment in t., going f., and seeing with one’s inner eye, the double decker bunk bed in that byword for serial fumigation, the Down Hilton Doss House on Liffeyside. The ddbb which is currently only half occupied.
And where DOB used a H-shaped branding iron to insert an indelible H in TOR to make his vanquished foe forever be pointed out as: THOR. As in:
-There goes THOR, the dude who was well and truly hammered.
One is left wondering what shape letter the branding iron the media Minimalist in waiting will brand the current media Maximalist with. Perchance, an O-shaped one? As in:
-There goes DOOB, dooby dooby do.
In the meanwhile, we long suffering listeners on Liffeyside must shut up or put with what the wireless empire of DOBlin airwaves at us on a 24/7 basis. Which is always guaranteed to give one of a fragile disposition a, erm, Julius Seizure.
If one is searching for that which the narrowing of focus with which Gemma O’Doherty was concerned at, one example will suffice, albeit from the sports section.
We can all recall precisely where we were on 7/ 11 when our local Mom and Pom corner store came tumbling down; ditto, with The Perkin last Sunday when the ‘Review of the Sporting Press’ was broadcast on Newstalk fm. One can clearly remember beiung seated in one’s designer Nissan Hut, chewing cashew nuts and musing about one’s most recent haircut (financial).
The show lasted for an hour on the same day when, that same afternoon, the biggest Irish sporting event was to start a couple of short hours later in Semple Stadium. It involved Limerick v Waterford and Kilkenny v Clare in the hurling league semi-finals.
So, what percentage of this sporting Irish progamme was devoted to this Irish sporting event? Well, it rhymes with milch, as in milch cow, to keep the branding iron thingy going.
Mind you, the panelists were scarcely promising: Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch and the (gasp) economist whose main claim to infamy is his quote ‘I almost forecasted the Celtic Tiger crash !’, both under the stern chairmanship of Joe Microphone, which is an interchangeable persona, by all accounts.
The programme was dominated by a ‘discussion’ on the two outstandingly romantic sports stories of the day:
Leicester : The Romance of the Lesser Paid Mercenaries ( i.e., who are biding their time for a bigger offer to come over the phone).
Connacht: The Romance of the Corribean Club Tourists (i.e., who are biding their time for a bigger offer to come over the phone).
The rugby game between Connacht and Munster which was ‘scintillating’ even though one team was hockeyed by the other. The attendance was ‘huge’ even though it drew less than a third of that at the hurling games in the Temple of Hurling in Thurles.
So, no mention of the GAA throughout the sixty minutes ? Not even a mandatory sideswipe at this organisation which is the default sporting target with the stand-by tickets in the DOBLin media.
Well, not exactly. There was the obligatory ankle tap. It came during a focus on Joe Brolly’s column in which he called for the banning of MMA. From the chuckle-generating author of the ‘Game for a Scaff’ column, Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch:
-I wouldn’t be for banning it. I’m congenitally opposed to censorship.
Par, of course, for the course from this outspoken critic of Section 31 in the past and current columnist of the Sindo.
It was left to the insightful dismal scientist David McWilliams (for it was he!) to point out (gulp) ‘that violence is not unknown in the GAA’.
Otherwise, this harmless globe trotter spent a deal of the programme whinging about the difficulties he faced when watching ‘the Connacht game on TG4’ and listening to the civilized commentary in the Q’s English on the wireless. Only to discover that the Leprechaun commentary on the telly was a couple of velly crucial seconds ahead.
How he didn’t actually use the C-word, perhaps we shall never know. C, that is, for Compulsory.
Irony alert: Michael Lowery, the man who made the crucial pass to Denis O’Brien at the start of the latter’s stellar career in the media, was formerly the main bag man for the refurbishment of (gasp) Semple Stadium, back in 1994, the Centenary Year of the GAH.
Deora Iosa.