Sindo - Partisan Rag?

transylman

I was reading the sindo today and was shocked at the level of journalism now on display in this newspaper. It now seems to have dropped all pretence at being a neutral publication and just presents a pro Fianna Fail viewpoint, with Bertie even getting his own semi-regular column. Just read the following attack piece posing as news to see how bad it has become.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/how-a-boozy-dinner-led-dunphy-to-finger-bertie-1166604.html

What really scares me is if this type of "journalism" becomes accepted it might spread to the other Tony O'Reilly newspapers. The issue of media ownership in this country seriously needs to be looked at.

mike65

I was'nt aware it was ever neutral, no paper is. They have that luxury.

Mike.

santosubito

OK, the Sindo's sh1t.
But, on a related point, Frank Connolly doesn't inspire confidence. He's happy enough to ask the hard questions, but when hard questions are put to him - namely Colombia - he shuts his cakehole PDQ.
He, in my opinion, has more questions to answer than Bertie.

santosubito

And, may I add, the Mail and Mail on Sunday have been just as partisan - except against Ahern. Mike 65's right: most papers aren 't neutral.

transylman

Maybe other papers are non-neutral but there are degrees and the Sindo is now at the extreme end of the scale. If all O'Reilly newspapers were to adopt the same agenda then he would have an undeniable influence over irish public life. Just look here for some shocking statistics

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2001/04/29/story135225928.asp

Excluding English produced papers he controls 67% of irish daily newspapers sold as well as 87% of sunday newspapers. Added to this he owns a large number of local newpapers all over the country.

santosubito

Yeah, but there's no suggestion the other INM papers will follow the Sindo's line.The Indo and Star, for example, have both hockeyed Ahern and do so regularly. And I think there was a little spat between the Indo and Sindo a few weeks ago over Eoghan Harris.

transylman

THe indo takes a more independent line but in the run up to the election it was still obviously suppportive of Ahern. Even now it is not laying into ahern in any clear way, unless you care to provide examples since all articles are available online. I dont read the star so i will take your word for it.
Its worth noting that the figures i gave were from 6 years ago. If anything, his grip on Irish media has strengthened since then.

santosubito

transylman wrote: »

THe indo takes a more independent line but in the run up to the election it was still obviously suppportive of Ahern. Even now it is not laying into ahern in any clear way, unless you care to provide examples since all articles are available online. I dont read the star so i will take your word for it.
Its worth noting that the figures i gave were from 6 years ago. If anything, his grip on Irish media has strengthened since then.

Well I will certainly be happy to do that.

odyssey06

No newspaper is neutral. And if any newspaper claims to be neutral, be very suspicious. I'd rather read a newspaper that nails its colours to the mast and says what it believes than one which pretends to be neutral but is actually insidiously or even unconsciously pushing its agenda.

Yes, there are columnists in the Sunday Independent who strongly push a pro-FF angle, especially Eoghan Harris. On the other hand, there are columnists who are consistenly critical of the government, such as Alan Ruddock, Colum Kenny and Gene Kerrigan. Ruddock and Kerrigan's columns receive strong prominence (main middle page article, and back page), so to claim that the newspaper just represents a pro-FF viewpoint is nonsense. You'd have to look long and hard to find an article from either of the above three which praises FF. They may sometimes be as hard on the opposition as they are on FF, but that's nowhere near to being the same thing.

kmick

What I dislike about the Sindo and most other news outlets these days is the whole '..a source close to Mr Whatshisname said...' or '...a close friend of Miss Iminshowbiz commented...' being printed as truth when they obviously are making most it up.

I would not believe a word of what the paper writes. Most of it anyway seems to be people writing about how wonderful they are e.g. gaybo, shane mcgowans wife, hugh leonard, the dude from "your a star" and various other 3rd rate wannabies.

You can read that whole paper in 30 minutes because you can just skip all that rubbish. Also they might as well not print the magazine it is so worthless. Mind you that goes double for the Irish Times magazine on a Saturday. I would not wipe my hole with it in case I got a dose of the clap from Roisin Ingles article.

mike65

On a side-ish note, Gene Kerrigan the Indo political editor has left to join Fianna Fails' PR dept!


Mike.

Humpty_Dumpty

mike65 wrote: »

On a side-ish note, Gene Kerrigan the Indo political editor has left to join Fianna Fails' PR dept!


Mike.

That's one of the funnier slip-ups I've read.....Kerrigan working for Fianna Fail? :-) It'd be like Eoghan Harris becoming Sinn Fein's press man!

It's Gene McKenna.

mike65

ROFLES! I knew he was a gene genie, hey it was early when I heard that.

Mike.

brianthebard

odyssey06 wrote: »

No newspaper is neutral. And if any newspaper claims to be neutral, be very suspicious. I'd rather read a newspaper that nails its colours to the mast and says what it believes than one which pretends to be neutral but is actually insidiously or even unconsciously pushing its agenda.

Definately agree with that, at least you can go pick up a paper knowing what you are going to be presented with. And there's a better chance you'll nod along in agreement:p

flogen

brianthebard wrote: »

Definately agree with that, at least you can go pick up a paper knowing what you are going to be presented with. And there's a better chance you'll nod along in agreement:p

True, no newspaper is ever truly neutral but I don't think there's any problem with the aspiration (as long as newspaper doesn't pretend it's always 100% neutral and is realistic about it).

The problem I have with a 'flag-to-the-mast' type of newspaper, like the Daily Mail and Sunday Independent, is that it becomes very inbred. Basically you end up with people buying a newspaper not to be informed but to have their opinions validated (for better or for worse) - then you have people avoiding that same newspaper because they don't want their opinions challenged.

Just look at Stormfront and Indymedia as examples of this happening online.

odyssey06

The problem is that as an aspiration I'm not sure if it's possible. Newspapers have only so many pages, choosing what's the front page story, choosing what stories to cover - decisions like this reveal the conscious and unconscious biases of the journalists and editors.

So either you have news which is reduced to blandness by its neutrality, or you have news which is infected with the unthinking bias of the journalists (look at the BBC and then to a lesser extent RTE) and claims to be neutral but isn't.

I think it's much worse to have the latter type of insidious agenda than it is to have champions of different agendas pushing their ideas with a diversity of voices - which is more likely to lead to open discussion and the best arguments.

I understand your point about having opinions validated, but because of difficulties in deciding what's "neutral", we are safer if we have the flags-to-the-mast approach where all opinions get a chance to be aired.

flogen

odyssey06 wrote: »

The problem is that as an aspiration I'm not sure if it's possible. Newspapers have only so many pages, choosing what's the front page story, choosing what stories to cover - decisions like this reveal the conscious and unconscious biases of the journalists and editors.

So either you have news which is reduced to blandness by its neutrality, or you have news which is infected with the unthinking bias of the journalists (look at the BBC and then to a lesser extent RTE) and claims to be neutral but isn't.

I agree, it's hard to say that a newspaper will be neutral all the time but I still don't see a problem with that aspiration.

At the same time it's important to look at the meaning of neutrality. It's not about not writing articles that are damaging to one side or another, which would be terrible an uninformative, it's just about giving the information in a straight and simple manner without playing up or down one side or another more than the facts would normally allow.

There will be different types of bias too - be it political allegiance or what someone considers more newsworthy than another person.

It's very easy for the Government of the day to say the media is biased against it, for example, because by definition when something goes wrong and the media reports it the flack is always aimed at those in charge. The reality is that a medium that reports the facts, whatever they be, is neutral - it's only when they select certain facts over others for personal or private reasons that their neutrality suffers.

I think it's much worse to have the latter type of insidious agenda than it is to have champions of different agendas pushing their ideas with a diversity of voices - which is more likely to lead to open discussion and the best arguments.

I agree but a neutral newspaper can still have this kind of diversity in the comments pages - the news articles should not be pushing any agenda, ideally, but the op eds are pretty much expected to.

nacho libre

flogen wrote: »

True, no newspaper is ever truly neutral but I don't think there's any problem with the aspiration (as long as newspaper doesn't pretend it's always 100% neutral and is realistic about it).

The problem I have with a 'flag-to-the-mast' type of newspaper, like the Daily Mail and Sunday Independent, is that it becomes very inbred. Basically you end up with people buying a newspaper not to be informed but to have their opinions validated (for better or for worse) - then you have people avoiding that same newspaper because they don't want their opinions challenged.

Just look at Stormfront and Indymedia as examples of this happening online.

true. I would not often agree with what Mark Dooley and Richard Waghorne have to say but i enjoy reading their articles for the reasons you cited.

jdivision

Newspapers have no obligation to be fair or unbiased, TV and radio news on the other hand has to be. If not you can complain to the BCI

moe_sizlak

odyssey06 wrote: »

No newspaper is neutral. And if any newspaper claims to be neutral, be very suspicious. I'd rather read a newspaper that nails its colours to the mast and says what it believes than one which pretends to be neutral but is actually insidiously or even unconsciously pushing its agenda.

Yes, there are columnists in the Sunday Independent who strongly push a pro-FF angle, especially Eoghan Harris. On the other hand, there are columnists who are consistenly critical of the government, such as Alan Ruddock, Colum Kenny and Gene Kerrigan. Ruddock and Kerrigan's columns receive strong prominence (main middle page article, and back page), so to claim that the newspaper just represents a pro-FF viewpoint is nonsense. You'd have to look long and hard to find an article from either of the above three which praises FF. They may sometimes be as hard on the opposition as they are on FF, but that's nowhere near to being the same thing.

while your correct in stating that not all sindo writers are pro aherne , alan ruddock is not fan of bertie himself but he is still a right wing writer , the only left winger at the sindo is gene kerigan , the only reason that the sindo supports aherne is because they feel that a fianna fail goverment is the most pro business of goverments and this is what is most important to tony o reilly , the sindo has no love for fianna fail in any other regard , they are almost anti repubican at the sindo and im not just talking about there attitude towards sinn fein , i salute there no bull crap as regards the shinners, no , the sindo is very pro british and even more pro american and in many ways pro israeli
tony o reilly is afterall sir tony so as i said earler his only interest in fianna fail is there current pro business possition

donaghs

I don't think its always been FF partisan, in the past it would have favoured FG more. But certainly does take positions on politics.

I would agree that its a total rag though. Always very thin on real news, and always far too many rambling "opinion" pieces, e.g. some journo/z-list celebrity thinking, "jaysus, what will I write about this week!".

And far too many "features" talking ****e about a small clique of people who know Glenda Gilsonan and think Lillies Bordello is coolness personified.

mike65

Sadly that has afflicted all the Sundays, check out the Turbine.

Mike.