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10 January 2008 Edition

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Media View

Editing Sinn Féin out of referendum story

For the political and media establishment in Ireland there is probably only one thing causing more sleepless nights than the possibility of losing the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty this year. That is the possibility of Sinn Féin, as the only significant party calling for a No vote, being seen as leading such a campaign.
The arrival of Libertas, a right-wing think tank funded by millionaire Dermot Ganley, could not have come at a more opportune time. From a standing start and with no organisation to speak of, Libertas has effortlessly become the voice of the No campaign for the Irish media with radio and television appearances on RTÉ and Ganley’s every word seeing newsprint. 
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin has been edited out of the story and the current edition of Village makes the bizarre claim that the party has not decided what position it will take on the Lisbon Treaty but the magazine’s expert political analysis claims party will be calling for people to endorse the Treaty. Hopefully, Vincent Browne will soon return from whatever planet he has gone to live on.
An RTÉ Week in Politics piece before Christmas saw Brian Dowling examine past opponents of EU Treaties without any reference to Sinn Féin. A profile of Ganley in the Sunday Tribune last weekend, examining the line-up in past campaigns, managed to do the same. As far as modern political journalism is concerned Libertas is, with the ministerial mercedes inspired u-turn of the Greens, the No campaign in the coming referendum.
It is not a version of reality that will survive the beginning of the actual campaign when the ability to mobilise supporters and activists on doorsteps becomes an issue, but the media is happy enough to be able to meet the obligation to cover an EU critical point of view, without having to reference the evil Shinners.


Last weekend the Sunday Independent continued its passionate assault on transparency in public life with a stream of pieces defending the Taoiseach’s increasingly bizarre financial history. Ahern himself gives an exclusive interview, splashed on the frontpage, to the paper’s Jody Corcoran attempting again to exploit the sympathy many would have for a man going through a separation to hide his dodgy dealings.
Elsewhere the tribunal’s investigations are put on a par with Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch-hunt of the 1950s and, outrageously, Adolf Hitler’s Germany, while Frank Connolly of the Irish Daily Mail is subject to another character assasination for having the temerity to be a journalist.
Brendan O’Connor, not a man generally thought of as being a supporter of civil liberties, frets over the investigation by the Mahon Tribunal of the Taoiseach, saying, “..if it can happen to him, you can be sure it could happen to any of us, if the circumstances are seen to call for it.” Even perhaps, O’Connor’s owner and one of Ireland’s leading tax exiles Tony O’Reilly? Truly an ‘Orwellian nightmare’ Brendan.


Speaking of civil liberties, top marks to Michael Clifford in the Tribune who has clearly been paying attention to some of the wilder rants from the law & order wing of Fine Gael. Clifford systematically goes through numerous Tory proposals to bring in discredited US bootcamps, abolish remission for good behaviour, impose new restrictions on bail and the latest bit of madness from the mind of Leo Varadkar. His most recent notion, hi-jacked from the more extreme fringes of the American right, rightly described as ‘rather loathsome’ by Fianna Fáil’s Conor Lenihan, is to charge prisoners for their incarceration.
Putting the boot into prison inmates, almost entirely from disadvantaged backgrounds, is an easy point-scoring exercise for Varadkar. As Clifford points out, “This concern for the state of the nation, and impulse to lash out, is confined to certain categories of crimes. Fine Gael has never distinguished itself in pursuing drunk drivers who kill, or fraudsters who might defraud the Revenue with false invoices, or tax dodging big farmers, or anybody else that might be drawn from the party’s wide base.”
Fine Gael’s pronouncements on justice issues are, “designed to grab headlines, but would never be put into practice, irrespective of whether or not they acquired power.”
Nice to see someone’s keeping an eye on the Blueshirts these days.


Finally, all Irish newspapers are speaking with one voice to warn low-paid public sector workers not to expect anything from the forthcoming Benchmarking report while suggesting higher paid civil servants could be in line for substantial increases. Horror stories about trade union intransigence, devoid of context, are told in last weekend’s Sunday Business Post by Pat Leahy and Kevin Myers in Tuesday’s Independent described them as the greatest current threat to the Irish state.
So congratulations then to Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts, Keira Knightley and the rest of Hollywood’s finest who are members of the Screen Actors Guild. They have forced NBC to cancel this year’s Golden Globe film and television award ceremony, at a cost to the company of between $10 and $15 million, because they refuse to cross a picket line in solidarity with striking writers.
In six week’s time the Oscars are supposed to take place but one of the biggest nights in the film calendar is now at risk of cancellation because some of the wealthiest and most coddled people on earth still know not to cross a picket line.
Gives you hope.


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