"The Minister [Pat Rabbitte], I think, has done a very good job, and he has come out supporting the industry, in a way that other Ministers haven't in the past. And I think that's to his credit."
WHAT makes the news?
Who decides what to print and what not to print?
What to broadcast and what not to show?
I don’t mean the fairly transparent process of editorial decisions, I mean more what is deemed newsworthy and what is not.
During the summer months, the time many journalists condescendingly call the ‘silly season’ as Government is on its holidays and, therefore, nothing of any worth will happen, what makes the news is even more of a leading question. Is the footage of a cat stuck inside a pipe a news item or is it just something somebody caught on their camera?
Perhaps for the tabloids nothing changes as a new celebrity hairstyle can often make the front page.
Still, if you pick up The Sun or The Star you know what you are going to get. You aren’t going to get an in-depth analysis of dissident republicanism in the North but you might get six pages of ‘X Factor frenzy’.
RTÉ and the serious newspapers, which let’s be honest for better or worse is what they are, have been fixated on political expenses.
First, we had Senator Ivor Callely and his claiming expenses on everything from places of residence in the furthest reaches of west Cork, whilst daily working in Dublin, to mobile phone receipts from companies that did not exist.
Secondly, we had Fianna Fáil smuginchief Noel Dempsey using the Government jet to fly from Dublin to Donegal where the Government luxury car that had driven up from Dublin empty, transported him to a different airport for a flight to Britain. Cutbacks, howareye?
And all of this is good news coverage, is proper journalism.
Still, why the feeling that we were merely shouting out at random, that the press were just poking around at some easy, obvious targets when the more substantial questions that need to be asked are avoided.
Was it because the paper that broke the story about Callely admitted that he was the only one they could afford to investigate as the Freedom of Information Act costs a small fortune to access, even for the expenses of a national paper.
So Callely was on the make. But so what? We already knew that.
He had already lost a ministerial position because of that and had been sent to the Séanad by none other than Bertie as compensation.
Our culture of political corruption and financial mismanagement isn’t really breaking news. It’s very old news, indeed.
So who makes the decisions?
Who says this is news and this isn’t?
Ask The Sun, for instance, or The Daily Mail, how they covered the Birmingham Six?
How they decided what the slant of the headline was going to be?
Or why The Sun decided to cover the Hillsborough tragedy the way it did?
All of those questions are asking why something is news and something is not.
Easy enough to bring it right up to date here.
Why is the Corrib gas pipeline route in north Mayo more or less a non-story across the Irish broadcast and print media? Because it is complex?
Because the interests of big business and the national interest would be better off not discussed at present? Because some print magnates have substantial oil interests too?
Half an ear cocked to this story would probably pick up on some locals jailed, some safety concerns, attacks on gardaí, infiltration by dissident republicans, huge benefits to the nation.
And that’s more or less it. Except for the fact that there is plenty more and, quite clearly, the reason why we don’t hear about it is because there seems to be a general consensus amongst the media that it isn’t news.
So a report by an organisation called Frontline, compiled by barrister Brendan Barrington, a former adviser to the SDLP in the North, has been ignored. This is what it said. It said that the Minister for Justice blocked investigations into heavy-handed garda tactics.
It said that an independent inquiry should be held into the beating by masked men of a local fisherman protesting against the pipeline. It said there was no evidence of republican involvement in protests.
It said intimidation of those supporting the Shell project was greatly exaggerated and was nothing worse than “people no longer talking to each other”.
Perhaps the most contentious environmental project in Ireland we have ever seen and somehow, even in the silly season, somehow it’s just not news.
