are the media capable of doing their job?

constitutionus

just something that's occurred to me over the last couple of months that's come to the boil recently and its just a question of weather the Irish media are actually in touch with reality in modern Ireland ?and seeing as so many of em come from a particular political view and social demographic are they even able to do their job, which in my mind at its most basic level, is to seek the truth?

was listening to brenda power on newstalks " your call "show the last few weeks and i don't know weather to laugh or cry at the ignorant bile she spews out on a daily basis leading me to wonder if anyone at the Irish times actually knows anyone outside of trinity/ ucd.
case in point she was ranting on about "boy racers" though what she really meant was car enthusiasts and i was appalled at the almost fascist nonsense she advocated. she was complaining about them congregating in car parks and how it shouldn't be allowed while seemingly oblivious to the constitutional guarantee of free association and free assembly. then she proffered such insights as " well , we don't know if drink was taken, but you never know" and " while we didn't see them speeding its obviously inevitable". now i'm sorry but if you removed the words "boy racer" and inserted the word "Nigerian" she'd have been open to prosecution for inciting racial hatred yet she managed to waffle on for half an hour with out providing any actual facts or even securing a car enthusiast to defend them till a caller rang in.

the implication of the show was that the death on our roads are down to these people yet in all the time Ive seen car crashes on the news Ive never seen a modified car involved in one. I'm not saying its never happened but i can categorically state that Ive seen more ministerial mercs involved in accidents than boy racers. and that includes the taoiseach! the sheer shoddiness of the item combined with the lack of investigative journalism left her completely intellectually bankrupt in my mind and this girls on every weekday and writes for one of the biggest papers in the country

but its not just her. kevin myers for instance went on a rant about busaras and their airport service complaining how he spent 40 plus minutes on the quays until he got to o connel street which he'd walked past to get to busaras. now I'm not gonna defend CIE but the most obvious thing to hit my mind was "if its been so long since you got a bus wouldn't it be prudent to check the bus route to see if its changed in the meantime?" yet no. this apparently is beyond myers intelligence. the problem was bus eireans alone.

this is just two example which have come to mind recently and while extreme they do illustrate that in the main the media in this country can pretty much be summed up in two words, rich -white.

now there's nothing wrong with that but these guys represent roughly 10% of the population in terms of a demographic yet theyre the ones telling the other 90% of us ,who's world their completely ignorant of on a simple monetary basis alone, that apparently were a bunch of racist for complaining about immigration, its effect on displacement and the race to the bottom . Despite the full hypocritical knowledge that they aren't impacted by it and don't socialise with anyone who does while simultaneously inhabiting what can only be called that last bastion of mono cultural Ireland .

how many Nigerians present on RTE? how many Latvians write for the TIMES? how many polish present on NEWSTALK?. I work with immigrants, they've got the skills yet they re not being represented. worse why is it every time they want to talk about an issue they immediately home in on an establishment figure who's hardly impartial and end up getting the party line. why aren't they ringing Joe public/immigrant who's dealing with the situation to reflect the reality.

its seems to me what were getting is a bunch of lads out of exclusive colleges talking to their mates from the same college and basing comments on that instead of getting off their arses and asking the people on the ground what the story is and reporting on it.

so how does all this tie in with my assertion they cant do their job? simple, agenda.since the media know most of the above they push a "liberal" agenda to seem like "we're just like you". which would be all right if it was actually liberal. unfortunately it tends to be whatever's policitally correct at the time which has resulted in most people either consciously or unconsciously thinking the media have an agenda that may be adverse to their own and as such don't reply honestly to their question. hence losing the only real purpose they serve, to report the truth.

the best example i can give of this is the citizenship referendum. for weeks leading up to this the TIMES, INDO, RTE and NEWSTALK all said it was a 50/50 two horse race. with polls compiled by MRBI and so forth. It was deemed too close to call. the result? 80% in favour. that's four out of every five people! yet none of our august institutions could twig this. so i ask the question, considering the make up and backround of the most influential characters in our media , are they capable of reporting whats really going on in this country? and is the only hope of getting the truth, no matter how well hidden, lying in other media like the net?

Nevyn

is that her name brenda power ?

That slot of her's is awful and so is the opinion she spouts she has not a clue,
I had tought they could not do worse then Orla Barry and I was stunned at how wrong I was.

constitutionus

yup, thats her. i miss declan at lest he had some grasp of reality. have to admit its great fun winding up orla barry. herself and claire byrne are dyed in the wool bra burning feminists. drove orla mental once when she was doing a spot on the new drink driving adds that have all the gratuitious scenes of people dying and trying to walk, gardai telling ol ones their loved ones croaked it and youngones needing plastic surgery. its bookended by a bloke in a bar deciding if he'll have a pint or not.
apparently it was shown in the cinemas first and she wanted people to ring or text in with their opinions on it and there was the ususal "oh its so powerful i was crying in the cinema" and " id never touch a pint again and drive " and so on

i sent in a text saying "yeah, great add. nice rack on the burnette at the bar!"

suffice to say she wasnt too impressed, i think the exact remark was "i think you missed the point of the add"

DublinWriter

constitutionus wrote:

its seems to me what were getting is a bunch of lads out of exclusive colleges talking to their mates from the same college and basing comments on that instead of getting off their arses and asking the people on the ground what the story is and reporting on it.

UCD? Exclusive? Heavens above!

I think per head of capita we have the highest number of 'opinion piece journalists' in this country, or 'rent-a-gob' as I tend to call that kind of work.

It's one of the cushiest jobs going. Once you've established a name for yourself, you'll be paid an attractive sum of money to opine on all sorts without having to worry too much about pesky little things like facts or investigation

I liked Brenda Power when she worked for RTE but she's lost the plot since going to Newstalk. Maybe they're not spiking her coffee with Evening Primrose anymore?

P.S. con - who is that ging mutt you insist on making us look at every time you post?

constitutionus

DublinWriter wrote:

P.S. con - who is that ging mutt you insist on making us look at every time you post?

philistine! im shocked and appalled, particularly in the news and media forum!!:D

t'is sharon ni bheolain. though to be honest im thinking of changing it. i keep thinking she's looking disapprovingly at everything ive just wrote.:)

galactus

With few exceptions, they're a bunch of chancers.

What drives me round the bend is the political coverage. Since the media are so cosy with the party political system nearly all coverage is with reference to the next election (no matter how far in the future it may be) and what parties are doing to jockey for position.

Does your average Joe give a toss about this bull? Of course not. In fact, I have often had to explain the whole right/left idea to people.

To fill the void, what we end up with is opiniated windbags like Dunphy and Hook who are incapable of balanced, informed and logical analysis.

No wonder Joe Duffy is so popular. Joe for President!

DublinWriter wrote:

(snip) who is that ging mutt you insist on making us look at every time you post?

Blasphemy indeed. You are obviously a boy-racing Nigerian who originally hails from Romania.

PS Yeah, that one at the bar in the drink-driving as is a wee cracker!

mike65

constitutionus wrote:

i sent in a text saying "yeah, great add. nice rack on the burnette at the bar!"

suffice to say she wasnt too impressed, i think the exact remark was "i think you missed the point of the add"

I heard that! and the boy-racer/drink taken comment (I don't listen to her show at all I should add apart from those moments!)

As for the wider point, the media lives in its own bubble - its a club everyone knows everyone esle and re-enforces each others innate prejudices. I'd love to hear some diversity of opinion but instead its the same old same old. - Iraq - Phone Robert Fisk, economy - get Brendan Keenan on the line and so on.

And there are all so fupping politicaly correct too, is there a media training school for left-ish right-onery I don't know about?

Mike.

constitutionus

used to get alot of texts read out by orla, it was kind of a pastime for me in work to try and come across as the biggest sexist redneck i could possibly be:D

if theres one thing i loath its political correctness, got declan to read out a text once saying it was basically deception through sophistry and i still maintain it is. and i think there actually is a place you can go to learn it! seem to remember matt cooper interviewing some woman once about a year back who did courses for business people and politicians to give them tips how to talk for ages about absolutely nothing. some sort of consultation firm.

i have to fess up that at being over thirty and only now really beginning to coming to terms with the whole left/ right thing. it reinforces my opinion that there should be a mandatory civics class in secondary where your taught your constitution, the stances of the political parties and their histories. the tax system and how to engage with the state in the legal process when questioning legislation/council decisions and how to stand for election. you dont need to do an exam for it and you can forget all about it afterward if you want but at the very least you should be taught your rights and about the society your about to enter. christ knows its got to be more useful than "sets"

its nice to see im not just paranoid about the state of the media and its one of the reason i thank god for the net. particularly sites like this and youtube. you actually get debate and opinion from people who are actually involved in the story and live in the position most of these people in the media couldn't even imagine let alone relate in their columns. i'll be honest i wouldn't be surprised if these well educated people drop into sites like this on a regular basis to suss out public opinion. ive definitely heard radio commentator practically quote posts from contributors to boards. not to mention basing whole stories on em (the infamous FAS girl thread got on the radio and wrote up in the papers. ok it was the herald but still )
personally i think this is a good thing and in a way us guys could be the future for the media in terms of news reporting. i remember the mayday riots in 02 in the days just before youtube and their like (i mean the techo not the site!) and distinctly remember the gardai commissioner coming on RTE television and laying into the hippies . stating how they started it and what a disgrace they were and the mayhem that ensued and how the professional actions of the gardai secured the city for the people . cue the indie media footage that the gardai thought they confiscated but didnt realise utilised the new tech that allowed it to send the data to a PC wirelessly and everyone in the nation saw a line of helmeted gardai with no numbers on hospitalising 27 people. if memory serves the gardai commissioner disappeared off the telly for about 2years after that and though only one gardai got prosecuted for his part in it (cause 150 gardai got amnesia despite none of them getting hit in the head) it still marked a sea change in how events are reported in this country. it was actually quite chilling to see a female reporter from RTE asking a gardai why they we're doing this and questioning him about he lack of numbers on gardai uniforms and the violence involved and see him respond by threatening her with arrest and confuscation of the camera citing the public order act!

obviously were still gonna get the politically correct "we wont push too far cause we depend on you for stories and leaks" line from the mainstream media but theres a healthy and growing number of people, some of whom are here, that put out what they see and not what they think they'll get away with. and thats gotta be a good thing

I'll be honest, while not perfect, i'd definitely put more faith in a boards poll than one put out by MRBI or REDC . mainly cause the anonymity means we'd probably get a more honest answer, and certainly theres a better chance of a larger crosssection of the public

mike65

Not sure about that last point, boardsies are still overwhelming young and urban, third level types sadly!

Mike.

constitutionus

thats what i mean about it not being perfect but there is a good collection of people from areas the professional organisations dont seem to canvas. and hell one eyes better than none

galactus

mike65 wrote:

Not sure about that last point, boardsies are still overwhelming young and urban, third level types sadly!

Mike.

Damn you to hell young, urban third level types!

DublinWriter

constitutionus wrote:

and i think there actually is a place you can go to learn it! seem to remember matt cooper interviewing some woman once about a year back who did courses for business people and politicians to give them tips how to talk for ages about absolutely nothing. some sort of consultation firm.

Probably Terry Prone of Carr Communications.

"Stop the lights Bunny!"...ah yer all probably too young to remember...

http://www.ivenus.com/therightstuff/features/RS-TC-FocalPoint-wk45.asp

mike65

I remember Quicksilver, its was cheap and affordable and they should bring it back (inflation adjusted naturaly).

Mike.

galactus

DublinWriter wrote:

Probably Terry Prone of Carr Communications.

"Stop the lights Bunny!"...ah yer all probably too young to remember...

http://www.ivenus.com/therightstuff/features/RS-TC-FocalPoint-wk45.asp

Play it again Norman!

Q. What has 50 legs and smells of piss?
A. The front row of Quicksilver.

Oh hang on, wrong thread...

Thunder_struck

constitutionus wrote:

……its just a question of weather the Irish media are……….

constitutionus wrote:

…..i don't know weather to laugh or cry at the ignorant

The ignorant? Like people who can’t spell? :rolleyes:

constitutionus wrote:

……..leading me to wonder if anyone at the Irish times actually knows anyone outside of trinity/ ucd.

You mean you resent people who are actually educated? Those freaks of nature who were intelligent enough to win places at Ireland’s quality third level institutions, rather than scraping in to sun-bed courses in the Ballyjoyridery Institute of Lower Technology?

constitutionus wrote:

……case in point she was ranting on about "boy racers" though what she really meant was car enthusiasts and i was appalled at the almost fascist nonsense she advocated.

Yep, we should defend the honour of ‘boy racers’, they’re lovely people, and even if they mow down Grannies at least they’ll be salt-of-the-earth enough to lay dandelions on their graves (but only once the cameras are rolling - "are yiz ready to capture me tears, boyz? Yiz can read all about my shame in de Sondeh Werrild.....of coorse I'z didn't get paid for de storeeee!"). :rolleyes:

constitutionus wrote:

……if you removed the words "boy racer" and inserted the word "Nigerian" she'd have been open to prosecution for inciting racial hatred yet……

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.

constitutionus wrote:

……..left her completely intellectually bankrupt in my mind and this girls on every weekday and writes for one of the biggest papers in the country

Gosh, wish you were on instead, you’re a bottomless pit of wisdom. :rolleyes:

constitutionus wrote:

until he got to o connel street

Haven’t actually heard of that street, where might it be? Was it named after Daniel 'o connel', perchance?

constitutionus wrote:

…yet theyre the ones telling the other 90% of us ,who's world their completely ignorant of on a simple monetary basis alone, that apparently were a bunch of racist for complaining about immigration

No, no, you’re not racist, you’re just a tiresome uneducated idiot. Go away, fool.

PS The real scary thing is that morons like you are allowed to vote!!!!!!!!!!

Judt

Well, there goes the tone of the debate.

DublinWriter

*gets his coat*

Flankerb

Good thread until Thunder Struck!

DublinWriter

Flankerb wrote:

Good thread until Thunder Struck!

Looks like he was having a bit of a 'difficult' night...
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=52629589#post52629589

constitutionus

just out of interest does anyone know someone in the media thats actually knowledgeable Sein Feins policies or support base? reason i ask is cause i was listening to sam smith on the Sunday supplement today and they were covering the results of yet another poll. most of it concentrating on the fact the current gov "will be returned" and slagging off enda kennys support which showed 39% of his own party dont think he'd make a good taoiseach when compared to bertie. anyway one of the tidbits was the revelation that gerry adams got 52% approval rating putting him second only to bertie in popularity stakes and when sam asked the panel what they thought all that could be heard was a stunned silence.

now this post isn't about politics who's doing well or not. but rather that we all know there are reporters who are if not biased are definitely supporters of political parties and as such generally present a certain slant in their reporting. sam smith for instance is a regular drinking buddy of macdowel, and we can probably name others that are in the same position with all the other mainstream parties but for the life of me i cant think of anyone who is in the Sein fein camp which probably accounts for why most media types seem to be perpetually baffled as to why the party gets support. so is this another example of media detachment or is there someone out there not getting on the airways who could clue them in:)

also can anyone think of any other areas that leaves our analysts lost?

Judt

One of our problems, I think, is that we have no BBC-alike in terms of impartiality. Alright, so the BBC has its problems with this, but if you take stock it's a far more professional "Paper of Record" style outfit than anything we have - everyone has their pundits, but at least organisations like the Beeb provide a less biased view of the world. RTÉ is not our BBC, as it has a history of pandering to governments of the day.

Give me one unbiased, halfway decent organisation and I can live with the rest of the "news".

DublinWriter

constitutionus wrote:

anyway one of the tidbits was the revelation that gerry adams got 52% approval rating putting him second only to bertie in popularity stakes and when sam asked the panel what they thought all that could be heard was a stunned silence.

There's a bit of a subtle difference between admiring Gerry Adams and voting Sinn Fein.

DublinWriter

Judt wrote:

RTÉ is not our BBC, as it has a history of pandering to governments of the day.

...and worst of all, its corporate sponsors.

That's why you'll never see a decent consumer affairs programme (such as BBC's Watchdog) on RTE.

partholon

DublinWriter wrote:

...and worst of all, its corporate sponsors.

That's why you'll never see a decent consumer affairs programme (such as BBC's Watchdog) on RTE.

which is depressing as hell cause we end up getting bloody propaganda half the time. case in point the nice treaty. i voted no to that and had to put up with sheafs of pages in the papers and hours of coverage on the telly telling me how i was a racist and a biggot and a xenophobe before UTV encapsulated in practically one sentence why i voted no. i didnt want a two tier europe, and unfortunetly thats exactly what we got. hell even bertie admited as much about a year later.

which brings up another issue, why is it we have to rely on "outsiders" to blow the whistle on scandles in this counrty. if memory serves it was a program in ulster that brought the whole paedo priests thing to public awareness. and it was a nurse from northern ireland that dropped doctor neary in it. surely our own media should be able to suss this stuff out themselves? i will credit RTE with their current work lately. leas cross was a great peice of investigative reporting but its still depressing that noone has the balls to name the hospitals that engaged in organ legging of childrens body parts.

is the sad truth that the only way somone will go for the juglar in the press is when theres no chance of it coming home to roost? look at the coverage of iraq, i couldnt see half of whats written here being printed in the states but then again its not our government their accusing so its safe

mike65

The Goodman scandal was a World In Action (RIP) report and the reporter who broke the story was the only one to do time!

I think RTEs lack of ball-busting was down to lack of resorces (investigative journalism is not cheap) and the impact of Rambos threat vis-a-vis the licence. Those who are old enough will recall that RTEs Seven Days (Today Tonight?) did some fine work in the early 80s notably on the phone tapping and Sean Doherty which it would latter turn out had much more to it than supposed at the time.

Mike.

dochasach

constitutionus wrote:

the best example i can give of this is the citizenship referendum. for weeks leading up to this the TIMES, INDO, RTE and NEWSTALK all said it was a 50/50 two horse race. with polls compiled by MRBI and so forth. It was deemed too close to call. the result? 80% in favour. that's four out of every five people! yet none of our august institutions could twig this. so i ask the question, considering the make up and backround of the most influential characters in our media , are they capable of reporting whats really going on in this country? and is the only hope of getting the truth, no matter how well hidden, lying in other media like the net?

Failures of these news sources helped ensure the 80% yes outcome. Remember the images, "citizenship tourists" were the reason Ireland's hospitals were in crisis? Are hospitals any better now? Immigrants were blamed for crime. For example, when the headless nigerian was found in the grand canal, reports suggested that it was an african ritual killing, not a family of Irish women with scissors. When there is high incidence of violent crime against foreign nationals, the assumption is that "they do it to themselves." Have any of the news sources investigated whether this is true or whether we are seeing 21st century racist lynchings? Shortly before the citizenship referendum vote, RTE poked Ireland's latent racism with blurry images of African women with prams.

The referendum was a landslide because immigrants unfairly shouldered the blame for failings in this government. And here we are again, an election is coming and suddenly the government is interested in further restricting immigration. These convenient scapegoats can't vote anyway. Can we count on our news media to counter political blame shifting with accurate investigative reporting? No. Just days ago RTE published this:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0103/children.html

RTE wrote:

17,000 people were granted leave to remain in the State under the scheme which was introduced after the citizenship referendum ruled out automatic citizenship for parents of Irish born children.

What's wrong here? The referendum ruled out citizenship for Irish born children, not their parents! Contrary to common belief and hardly contradicted by Irish media, parents of Irish born children didn't have automatic citizenship prior to the referendum! The referendum didn't change this. The referendum only removed automatic citizenship rights of these Irish born children.

Be thankful that your right to live and work in Ireland isn't impacted by election campaigns or the accuracy of RTE news reports.

dochasach

dochasach wrote:

Failures of these news sources helped ensure the 80% yes outcome. Remember the images, "citizenship tourists" were the reason Ireland's hospitals were in crisis? Are hospitals any better now? Immigrants were blamed for crime. For example, when the headless nigerian was found in the grand canal, reports suggested that it was an african ritual killing, not a family of Irish women with scissors. When there is high incidence of violent crime against foreign nationals, the assumption is that "they do it to themselves." Have any of the news sources investigated whether this is true or whether we are seeing 21st century racist lynchings? Shortly before the citizenship referendum vote, RTE poked Ireland's latent racism with blurry images of African women with prams.

The referendum was a landslide because immigrants unfairly shouldered the blame for failings in this government. And here we are again, an election is coming and suddenly the government is interested in further restricting immigration. These convenient scapegoats can't vote anyway. Can we count on our news media to counter political blame shifting with accurate investigative reporting? No. Just days ago RTE published this:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0103/children.html


What's wrong here? The referendum ruled out citizenship for Irish born children, not their parents! Contrary to common belief and hardly contradicted by Irish media, parents of Irish born children didn't have automatic citizenship prior to the referendum! The referendum didn't change this. The referendum only removed automatic citizenship rights of these Irish born children.

Be thankful that your right to live and work in Ireland isn't impacted by election campaigns or the accuracy of RTE news reports.

Update:
Some details regarding the process the IBC/05 parents must follow to renew their residency were published in today's Herald A.M. I haven't yet seen anything on RTE or a correction for their forementioned mistake, but I may have missed it. In case an IBC/05 parent stumbles upon this comment, some details are available here:
http://www.justice.ie/80256E01003A02CF/vWeb/pcJUSQ68MNEK-ga
and the residency renewal form is here:

http://193.178.2.128/permission.pdf

Unfortunately, that website is down at the moment...