Even sensationalism is thin in the Silly Season

We are just entering the Silly Season, Ráithe an Amaidis, when newspapers, starved of any real news, grab increasingly for anything to grace their pages.
So, if coverage is trivial and mind-numbing in normal circumstances, it is even more so at this time of year.
The Rachel O’Reilly murder trial was grist to the papers’ mills then, because it gave them an excuse to indulge in the most lurid coverage, while pretending to be shocked and outraged.  But not surprisingly, there was precious little analysis of the evidence presented in the case, and no analysis – even in the ‘quality’ papers – of the inherent problems of purely circumstantial evidence.
These questions, of course, don’t concern us directly most of the time – until you, or someone belonging to you, ends up a potential victim of a dubious legal procedure.  There is a widespread belief - which, incidentally, I share – that Joe O’Reilly probably did murder his wife.  And the majority aren’t too bothered about the technicalities or the legal niceties.
But these ‘niceties’ are the stuff of democratic rights in other contexts, and the way in which the media airily dismiss any expression of concern about the procedures as implying a lack of concern for the victim of a dreadful crime underlines two things about our “free” press: one, sensationalism sells papers and increases the profits of newspaper proprietors; two, deep analysis threatens the status quo (which the press are committed to maintain) because it might encourage independent thinking, and by definition independent thinking is not controlled by those who believe they have a right to control it.
So, search through the miles of print on the O’Reilly case, and – apart from a solitary opinion piece by Vincent Browne – you will search in vain for any deep analysis.
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This lack of interest in getting to the roots of problems is usually explained away by pressures of space, but that is obviously a spurious argument at this time of year, when it’s a hard job to find anything to put in the papers.
The story of the extended Roma family camped on the M50 roundabout was, therefore, tailor-made for its sensational value and crying out for some explanation of who the Roma are and what is the context of their coming to Ireland.
But again there was no attempt by any of the press to do this – no analysis of the reality or otherwise of anti-Roma discrimination; no analysis of the social deprivation that pervades Roma cultural and social experience.
Instead, the coverage swayed between a pretended humanitarian concern for the clearly dreadful conditions in the M50 camp, an occasional dismissive recognition of the obvious fact that Ireland  – despite our much vaunted current wealth – cannot solve the problems of the Roma, to an abstract reporting that avoided any real discussion of what role we should or can play in addressing these problems through international assistance and our own immigration policies.
No, the motto was ‘keep it on the surface, and let simplistic liberalism battle it out with simplistic racism’. 
Meanwhile, this particular Roma family are now going home.  But others will come, because the desire to live better is not a mortal sin but a natural drive of human hope.
And when the others come, our media coverage will remain the same.  Liberals and racists will express their different outrage in the same way, and the media will contribute nothing to our understanding of how to deal decently with the problem.
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Perhaps it’s a bit unfair to castigate the press too much during the silly season when there’s very little news.  But the ironic thing about this week is that there was political news – the Seanad election.
There is a perennial debate about Seanad reform whenever this election comes up, but the system itself is a very complex one, with its panels and inside tracks and outside tracks and so on.
The public at large know nothing about this, but not one newspaper – even the ‘quality’ paper of record (The Irish Times) – made any attempt to explain how it works, or why!
Of course, it’s probably true that only Éamon de Valera could have invented anything as complex as the Seanad electoral system, but all the more reason to explain it.  And if the reason for having a Seanad at all is unclear, all the more reason to discuss that and again explain how the current one comes about.
But we come back to the point: the press exists to make money and to guide public opinion along the lines of supporting a context in which the business interests behind the press can flourish.  It is not about informing, or equipping people to analyse, and it is certainly not about empowering ordinary people to take charge of all aspects of our public life.
So, we cheer the O’Reilly verdict, tut-tut the conditions in which the Roma live, and spare only a glancing thought as to what this Seanad is all about.
That’s democracy, Irish press style.