Interview with Irish journalist Frank Connelly

FYI

Discussion of Bertie's finances and the concentration of ownership in Irish media. And this point on the lack of international context to the whole (ongoing) episode...

Extract:

[FC: That’s because Bertie Ahern’s accounts and his explanations are totally incredible – you can’t believe a word of it. What it has become is a battle of spin and the most important story of say the last ten years, which it is - whether the Taoiseach took money from business people while he was Minister for Finance in the early 90s. It’s the sort of thing that would have brought down senior politicians like him no matter what position they hold – recently the Prime Minister of Japan went because it emerged that he had taken money from business people in the early 90s and had not come up with a proper explanation – and that’s only in the last two months.

MB: And we also recently had the example of the Swedish politician who had not renewed her television licence and who resigned her job because of it…

FC: Exactly, and so this is the key story and yet what’s happened is that a very large slice of the media – and certainly the print media are, firstly, refusing to accept responsibility in examining the story – they were given the same details as I have received in relation to the extraordinary personal finances of Mr Ahern – and that’s a man who claims that as Minister for Finance he never had a bank account in 1993. I mean that suggestion on its own is absurd. RTE appear to be slightly afraid of the story having given Bertie his opportunity to make up his convoluted explanations last year and are not chasing it as hard as perhaps they should. Other newspapers just seem flummoxed by the whole thing.]


http://www.mediabite.org/article_Confronting-Power---Part-1_464545113.html

santosubito

Does the interviewer ask Frank about his explanation as to what he was doing IN Colombia on a false passport?

FYI

santosubito wrote: »

Does the interviewer ask Frank about his explanation as to what he was doing IN Colombia on a false passport?

don't think so. and there's no evidence he was in columbia - unless you've hidden it somewhere!!!!!.

flogen

I think the interviewer failed to challenge Connolly for the most part - some of the questions seemed far too soft or cosy. Far from objective.

Maybe that was the plan - maybe it wasn't meant to be too hard hitting - but it just came across like a missed opportunity, frankly (as did the fact that next to no mention of the CPI was made, forgetting about the Columbia 3 issue). Especially when you consider the fact that the site is supposed to be about the media and media bias.

FYI

flogen wrote: »

I think the interviewer failed to challenge Connolly for the most part - some of the questions seemed far too soft or cosy. Far from objective.

You might be right, what questions would you have asked?

As far as McDowell and the Columbia allegation, there's not much more to add to the issue than that below:

McDowell's Dail Statement:

"I am informed by An Garda Síochána that following the arrest in August 2001 of James Monaghan, Martin McAuley and Niall Connolly - who became known as the “Colombia Three” - the Colombian authorities had established that on April 10th, 2001, three people in possession of false Irish passports had earlier entered the Farc-controlled region in Colombia. The three persons who entered in April were subsequently identified as Frank Connolly, Niall Connolly and Pádraig Wilson.

Niall Connolly, who was identified as being part of both parties, is the brother of Frank Connolly and was described by the government of Cuba in August 2001 as the official Sinn Féin representative to the Cuban government and as resident in Havana.

The Garda authorities have informed me that they are fully satisfied as to the accuracy of the identification of all the members of both parties.

ose to rehearse here the gravity of the charges against the “Colombia Three” but it clearly strains credulity to suggest that the two visits were unconnected.

This is all the more so when the persons on both trips had access to false passports which could only have been obtained in such quantities as part of a well- organised sinister enterprise. Niall Connolly, the brother of Frank Connolly, travelled on both occasions on a false passport.

I do not accept that the purpose of the visit on either occasion was to study the peace process in Colombia.

Pádraig Wilson was a known senior IRA member and has been convicted in Northern Ireland of explosives offences and conspiracy to murder, and of IRA membership.

James Monaghan was a known senior IRA member and has been convicted of numerous explosives and firearms offences, in this jurisdiction and in the UK, and of IRA membership.

Martin McAuley was a known IRA member and has been convicted of possession of a firearm.

On the basis of intelligence reports furnished to me, the visits appear to have been connected with an arrangement whereby the Provisional IRA furnished know- how in the use of explosives.

The consideration received by the Provisional IRA under the arrangement is believed to be the payment of a large amount of money by Farc, which finances its activities by its control of the cocaine trade in the area of Colombia which it controls.

I am aware that - despite the commitment of the Centre for Public Inquiry to “independently promote the highest standards of integrity, ethics and accountability” - Mr Connolly has proved very reticent in answering any detailed questions about the subject of his presence in Colombia."



Frank on RTE News at One:

SOR: Have you visited Columbia?

FC: No.

SOR: Ever?

FC: No.

SOR: And then so you’re saying the question of you being in Columbia in possession of a false passport, is irrelevant?

FC: Is false.

SOR: When you were being questioned by Gardai in relation to all of this did they show you any documentation or picture purporting to be your picture?

FC: Of course they showed me documentation and what I have said from that time onwards is that, iand this is 3 and a half years ago, it had nothing to do with me.

SOR: Did they show you a picture that was a picture of you?

FC: Well I’m not going to discuss firstly what happened in my discussions with the Gardai, but I think you could fairly make that assumption yes. And what I’m saying is that I have disputed and denied that I had anything to do with this alleged false passport.

SOR: Was it your picture?

FC: That I saw? That was shown to me? Absolutely not.

When asked specifically what he had been doing at the time he was alleged to be in Columbia, Connolly said:

When the DPP, if he ever does, decides to forward a case against me, I will deal with all the issues. I’m not going to be interrogated as if I was in a Garda station on an RTÉ programme.

constitutionus

read this on another site a while back.

it is pretty obvious that the level of investigative journalism in this country is crap and anyone who's read the sindo/ indo since before the elections can see its been nobbled.

what interests me is what went on at that meeting with tony bertie and biffo. who only came to the fore in a real sense as berties chosen replacement after that stage. why is it no journo whats to suss that out?

regardless what you feel about frank you cant deny that what went on in terms of political corruption and the gardai in donegal would never have been revealed if it werent for him so its fecking obvious he's pissed off some very powerful people and it says alot that he can only get a job on a british newspaper now. you can certainly draw a correlation between the two. even now some people are still claiming him and the CPI are the biggest threat to democray the state's ever seen! i mean FFS , more of a threat than the removal of the right to silence? more of a threat than leglislation allowing the bugging of citizens? even haughey had the decency to do THAT on the sly.

ive come to the conclusion that the irish mainstream media is irredeemably corrupted by vested interests, nepotism and corporate bias.. and who can blame em. after all if ya piss off the government, tony o reilly and dennis obrien where do you go? the dole thats where! its amazing to think virtually all the print media in this country is controlled by two people. ditto for the radio as well as i belive tony just bought yet another station . and with dennis obrien trying to take over INM he could end up owning ALL of it

thank god for the net, it may need more scrutnity but at least its free !

flogen

FYI wrote: »

You might be right, what questions would you have asked?

Well I wouldn't have agreed with him quite as much, for a start. For example, rather than say "The story smacks of desperation to a lot of people", allowing him to simply agree, I might have played devil's advocate a bit more and asked him about his friendship with Dunphy and pressed on the suggestion that he might be helping his mate out etc.

By mid-way through the interview it went from being about the media to being about Bertie, with the interviewer agreeing with what Connolly was saying.

(On a separate topic I also would have asked him how he feels about writing for a newspaper that previously vilified the Irish, asked him about his time in different places and how they compare and asked him if he has much choice in where he goes now as an investigative journalist and one who has worked in so many places and developed a reputation, fair or not).

I did like reading about his opinion on investigative journalism, mind you, and I think it's stuff like that that's worth discussing in this kind of situation - I can hear him or anyone else rant about Bertie any other day of the week.

constitutionus

i agree with that. i did think it lapsed into a rehash of the bertie stuff when it really shouldve been kept to the substantive issue of all the papers having the info but only a few reporting on it and then grudgingly.

in fairness to the dumphy bit it was a shocking example of hack journalism. i vividly remember reading the sindo that day agog at the handling of the story. it was a blatant example of shooting the messenger. all i could think of at the end of it was " you havent addressed the issue/story/ facts!" it was literally a whole front page slagging off "boozy" dumphy with no annalysis of what his statement entailed. the coroboration of the allegtions against bertie is a big ****ing deal !

TBH sometimes i buy the sindo to see propaganda in action. i cant help thinking they reallyt do regard the public as thick as ****.there are some good writers there but by god you have to keep your witts about you.

FYI

Some fairness in those criticisms IMO. But to focus on the relationship between Connelly and Dunphy would be to divert attention from the foci of the story, and that would essentially follow the mainstream line - which has been pretty abysmal.

And as constitutionus says the fact Frank has to work for a British paper says a lot about the state of Irish media.

The second part is there now:

http://www.mediabite.org/article_Confronting-Power---Part-2_682571808.html

flogen

constitutionus wrote: »

in fairness to the dumphy bit it was a shocking example of hack journalism. i vividly remember reading the sindo that day agog at the handling of the story. it was a blatant example of shooting the messenger. all i could think of at the end of it was " you havent addressed the issue/story/ facts!" it was literally a whole front page slagging off "boozy" dumphy with no annalysis of what his statement entailed. the coroboration of the allegtions against bertie is a big ****ing deal !

TBH sometimes i buy the sindo to see propaganda in action. i cant help thinking they reallyt do regard the public as thick as ****.there are some good writers there but by god you have to keep your witts about you.

True, and while I know you think Connolly has a lot of questions to answer it's clear that the Sindo have been lining him up as the fall guy too over the last while, not that they were his biggest fans before then.

It's actually sad to see a publication (not really a newspaper) act like that and get away with it - they're more Pro-FF than the Irish Press was (well it's actually Bertie they really love, considering the hack-job they've been doing on Cowen too)

mike65

Dreadful stuff. There's little light going to be shed if like-minded souls stroke each others chins.

Frank Connellys current home is the Irish Daily Mail (owned by Associated Newspapers Ltd. Its UK sister stands for everything that FC would abbor I imagine) newspaper which has clearly decided he is useful for them, proberly as a way of differentiating them with respect of the INM titles.

Suppose the Ed of the Sindo got a bang on the head and made Connelly an offer to be his 'resident troublemaker' would he jump ship and if he did would most of that 'interview' ever happen?

Mike.

jdivision

Frank moved to the Mail because he was offered massive money to do so.

mike65

If thats the case, I rest my case!

Mike.

flogen

jdivision wrote: »

Frank moved to the Mail because he was offered massive money to do so.

And he had been at Village, which was going monthly and was/is clearly in financial difficulty (so I'd imagine he was facing a pay cut there as well as very little job security)

I would be curious to know if he'd be given a job in The Irish Times or The Sunday Business Post again - I'm not sure how he left them but I think I recall hearing that he left at least one after a row.

flogen

FYI wrote: »

Some fairness in those criticisms IMO. But to focus on the relationship between Connelly and Dunphy would be to divert attention from the foci of the story, and that would essentially follow the mainstream line - which has been pretty abysmal.

Well I suggested raising the issue as a way of challenging Connolly's comments about what the Sindo was doing, rather than just agreeing with him.

Fair point, though, it's not something you want to have dominate an interview because it's a weak argument to suggest that Dunphy was doing it just to help his friend out... but that's why it's called playing devil's advocate!

lostexpectation

there weren't interviewing frank connelly, they interviewing a journalist frank connelly about the media using the bertie story as an example

flogen

lostexpectation wrote: »

there weren't interviewing frank connelly, they interviewing a journalist frank connelly about the media using the bertie story as an example

And as part of that Connolly criticised the Sindo's coverage of the Bertie story but wasn't challenged on it.

lostexpectation

well frank connelly gave his opinion on why dunphy spoke, if they asked the question again he would have probably gave then same answer, that was his view, we can take it or leave it, you can only ask so many questions, I don't see any soft questions there because the interview wasn't about trying to trip up FC

flogen

lostexpectation wrote: »

well frank connelly gave his opinion on why dunphy spoke, if they asked the question again he would have probably gave then same answer, that was his view, we can take it or leave it, you can only ask so many questions, I don't see any soft questions there because the interview wasn't about trying to trip up FC

It's not a matter of asking the question again, it's a matter of challenging a comment he makes in the answer to the original question.

Repeating a question only works when a relevant answer isn't given.

For example when Connolly said:

Now, to a lesser extent the Sunday Tribune and the Sunday Times picked up on spin that emanated from Bertie Ahern, according to themselves, at the weekend that said, [they believed] that Dunphy only came forward because he was annoyed about what had happened to me at the Centre for Public Inquiry a couple of years ago and almost that I had put him up to it. The idea that Eamon Dunphy could be put up to anything by anybody is absurd enough but that was the spin that was flipped by the government and a number of journalists just followed the spin.

The interviewee could have followed up with any number of questions.

Perhaps ask him if he thought his connection with Dunphy lessened the impact of the evidence given, or if he thought that the connection meant that such a reaction was inevitable. Perhaps it could have been asked if he thought the media was obliged to question the integrity of all witnesses in such a serious matter or if it wasn't their role etc.

Instead they said:

MB: The story smacks of desperation to a lot of people.

It isn't so much that there were soft questions, in fact if you look through that first part there are very few questions put forward at all (around four actual questions by my count), but that the answers were never followed up on properly and were often just agreed with, as seen above.

But since you raise the issue of soft questions, here's an example of one, in my opinion:

MB: It is extraordinary. Do you think that it is the effectiveness of the spin that has kept public opinion on the fence on the issue up until recently?

Then there's the half-questions like 'They went into overdrive?', which is really just a comment with a question mark at the end.

Now the original intention of the interview clearly wasn't to grill FC, that's not a problem as all interviews have differing aims and objectives. The aim of this one was to get his opinion on the state of the media in Ireland (even there you can challenge what he says - so had he said investigative journalism was so rare in Ireland because of a lack of funding it could be put to him that the public just don't want it, or that journalists are too lazy or keen to avoid angering contacts).

Unfortunately it went, or was allowed to go, into a far more political realm and so had Connolly making his opinion known on political issues alongside media issues and this went unchallenged.