A picture paints a thousand words

BY JOANNE CORCORAN

Newly elected Dublin councillor Daithi Doolan's daughter Siofra was a big hit at the count

Just after 9pm on Sunday, Mary Lou McDonald, accompanied by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, strode purposefully into the Simmonscourt Pavilion at Dublin's RDS. Her reception was phenomenal. What must have been 30 to 40 cameras began flashing frantically, supporters whooped and cheered, journalists scrambled to hear what she had to say. That photo of her hands being held up in victory by the two Sinn Féin leaders, taken before she was even elected, was the one that was carried in every newspaper on Monday.

What many people probably don't know is that, while photographers were climbing over themselves to get the picture that said it all, Enda Kenny had slipped in behind the mêlée, unnoticed.

It was a weekend of madness. Based in the RDS and alternating between the count and the press centre upstairs, I was perfectly situated to get a glimpse into the strange world of the establishment media as it tried to come to grips with what was unfolding below. And come to grips it did.

"The story here is Sinn Féin"

Walkmans are a wonderful thing. Mine enabled me to keep track of what was going on around the rest of the country, even though I was confined to the RDS. The trick was to check RTÉ on the hour and Newstalk 106 every 20 minutes. You could tell the news had started by the headline: "The story here today is Sinn Féin."

As SF candidate after candidate topped the poll, more and more political analysts were rolled into radio studios to dissect the results. All came to the same conclusion — this is Sinn Féin's weekend.

Television broadcasts opened with pictures of Sinn Féin candidates (mostly Cork's Jonathon O'Brien) being hoisted on shoulders as the results came in. Sky News ran with Dubliner Larry O'Toole taking two quotas in his ward, calling it the story of the election.

By Sunday, the papers had seized upon these stories and others, and most carried front pages of various candidates in different stages of celebration. The Sunday Business Post ran with a picture of Dublin's Killian Forde and Daithí Doolan, who simultaneously romped home to victory. The previous day, Doolan had been snapped by every photographer in the hall holding his newborn baby, complete with sticker 'Doolan can do it'. This became a favourite with editors and the baby took pride of place on many a page, with Doolan relegated to a back of the head shot.

Photo of the weekend went, strangely enough, to Michael McDowell. Someone had cheekily placed a Sinn Féin sticker on his back, sending Photocall's photographer into photographer Heaven (come forward and take a bow).

Some time late on Sunday night, the media decided they'd had enough, and went home. They missed the most historic moment of the weekend — Mary Lou McDonald being officially elected to the European Parliament some time after 3am, Sinn Féin's first ever MEP.

Hogging the headlines

The smell of success was in the air come Monday morning. Labour had spent the weekend whining about how they had made huge gains but all people wanted to talk about was Sinn Féin. Coffee must have been spluttered and toast choked upon as the Labour heads opened their papers on the dawn of a new day.

The Examiner continued on from the weekend line of Sinn Féin surges. Harry McGee's headline set the tone: 'Sinn Féin big bang leaves heavy hitters out for the count'.

"Predictions about the rise and rise of the party have been percolating for months," McGee wrote. "But only a fool could dispute the party's explosion as a muscular, viable national party was the theme that dominated the entire weekend."

The paper's editorial gave us our due, and also pointed to the very relevant fact that the vitriolic bile that had spilled from McDowell's mouth in the run-up to the election had obviously had no effect. Voters, it said, had made up their own minds.

Matt Cooper suggested that the party would hold the balance of power in the future.

All of this was laid out over pages and pages of election coverage, dominated by Sinn Féin. The Irish Times was an anti-climax after that, the self-proclaimed paper of record adopting a much more muted approach to Sinn Fein's successes.

The Irish Independent analysed the future of Sinn Féin, with Sam Smyth propounding that Bertie Ahern's future would be more Mary Lou than Mary Harney. Senan Molony gave us a friendly headline with 'Sinn Féin rewarded for years of activism in the community'.

In an extensive election pullout, the Indo adopted the theme 'Fianna Fáil bloodbath' and ran with it. Pictures of Mary Lou, Pearse Doherty and John Dwyer were scattered across its pages, and one article lauded the massive profiles the party had managed to establish for its EU candidates.

The Irish News carried several photos of Bairbre de Brún, and even conceded 'Dramatic gains for Sinn Féin' on its Monday front page.

All of Monday's papers talked about Pearse Doherty as being, if not the next Northwestern MEP, then the next Donegal TD.

Dublin's Evening Herald managed to resist all reports of success for the party. In true Comical Ali fashion, the paper had spent the days previous ignoring any notion that Sinn Féin would do well, even running a half-page editorial on Thursday reminding voters that any ballot papers marked Sinn Féin would be "dripping with blood".

On Tuesday, it broke its vow of denial to claim on its front page that Mary Lou would be joining the Communists when she got to Europe (obviously that's what the red jacket was about all along).

Another perspective

On Monday the Irish Independent gave us a nice slant on the weekend when it pointed out that women had taken six of the 16 seats in the European Parliament. Sinn Féin could be proud that two of those came from its party.

The Examiner provided another perspective of the previous days' events, dealing with the citizenship referendum, which was passed with a whopping majority.

An article pointed out that while the jubilant celebrations, and sometimes commiserations, were ongoing in the RDS, a Filipino conference celebrating their country's independence day was taking place next door. One man, whose wife is Filipino and who already has Irish children with her, said that any future children they have would not be Irish. With all the excitement, it was easy to forget that the most unequal, racist, and unfair referendum had just been passed.

For Ireland, to quote Dickens, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.