Irish Independent's skewed propaganda broadside against Sinn Féin

THE EDITOR of the Irish Independent penned no fewer than three absurd articles in the Denis O'Brien-controlled paper on Thursday claiming that Sinn Féin has “orchestrated a campaign of bullying and intimidation” against the most powerful media organisation in the state, RTÉ.

Editor Fionnán Sheahan just happens to be the husband of a rival election candidate opposing Sinn Féin in Dublin Bay North and was himself Chairperson of Young Fine Gael at University College Cork but he never seems to acknowledge in print his obvious conflicts of interest.

The Independent (which in the recent Dáil term has been forced by the Press Council to apologise to Sinn Féin on numerous occasions for its inaccurate and untruthful reporting) has apparently, and without irony, decided to give us all a lesson in bias.

Sheahan attacks Sinn Féin and An Phoblacht over their criticism of a decision out of the blue by RTÉ last week to slash Sinn Féin's election coverage.

RTÉ argued that days of attacks on Sinn Féin by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour and the Establishment media in relation to their echoing of civil liberties criticism of the Special Criminal Court constituted election coverage and therefore must be deducted from the party's airtime.

Sinn Féin's social media response to the Section 31-style censorship by RTÉ managers reached hundreds of thousands of people with many criticising the state broadcaster's stance as unfair. On Wednesday, RTÉ resumed its coverage of the party's press events.

Fionnán Sheahan, the husband of former Fianna Fáil and now Independent Senator Averil Power, went on to claim that during the 2011 election there was an “insidious campaign by Sinn Féin supporters to bully RTÉ into giving their candidates more airtime”.

This “insidious campaign” which Fionnán would lead us to believe had RTÉ executives quaking behind their boardroom doors came in the form of legitimate official complaints to the station under accepted broadcasting guidelines over the impartiality of their election coverage and reduced airtime for Sinn Féin.

Yet the study which Sheahan himself refers to describes the 2011 complaints as “a low-level campaign by Sinn Féin supporters who claimed their party was under-represented based on its standing in public opinion polls”.

That hardly sounds like an “orchestrated campaign of intimidation” to “bully” RTÉ, as the Indo sensationally claims.

There is another study that the Irish Independent may be interested in.

Edelman Communications noted that, looking at online coverage of the general election, Sinn Féin's in-house content is beating the behemoth of the Irish Independent when it comes to engagement with social media users.

The Internet has leveled out the playing field somewhat and voters are not longer buying into the Indo's skewed propaganda.

The fact that the corporate media can no longer dictate or control the flow of news sharing is what rankles the likes of Mr Sheahan and the Irish Independent.