Cowengate: The whole tweet and nothing but the tweet

“GOD, what an uninspiring interview by Taoiseach this morning.” So began Simon Coveney’s September 14th tweet. By that evening, the Fine Gael spokesperson for Transport and the Marine had caused three separate media hurricanes: a debate about libel online, Ireland’s international reputation, and a full-scale leadership debate in Fianna Fáil.
First up was the libel issue.
Had Coveney libelled Brian Cowen? If yes, had that libel been enjoined by RTÉ and many other news media outlets who gleefully repeated the full contents of his tweet? Answer: we still really don’t know.
Then came the minor issue of the story mutating into an international news event, flashed across the world, particularly in the USA. Benefiting from time differences, US news media were able to carry the unrolling fall-out from the Cowen interview on their morning news services. ‘Cowengate’ was born.

PROMPTED in part by news agencies such as Reuters, who were carrying the story internationally, the tweet, the podcast of the interview and the growing interventions were all available in easily-accessible, electronic, media-friendly formats.
O’Leary Analytics, an internet news monitoring service, found that, by midnight that day, more than 457 articles had been published online in 26 states.
Finally, the media debate on what had or hadn’t happened in the Ardilaun Hotel in Galway on the night of September 13th rolled on for the whole of the week. With all seven daily papers in Ireland leading the way, followed by talk radio, there were many explicit discussions on what the Fianna Fáil members had for dinner and to drink that night.
And so we know that Brian Cowen is a fine singer and mimic, has the occasional drink, and goes to bed quite late on weekday nights.
Should we be privy to this information? Is there to be no dividing line between the private and public lives of our politicians? Are they political athletes bound to provide daily urine samples?

TWITTER has brought a new dimension, perhaps temporarily, into Irish politics where we are seeing the actual politician rather than a press release or a photo-op. Most of them are pretty boring ordinary people but there are occasional gems.
Dan Boyle’s tweet on Fianna Fáil former Defence Minister Willie O’Dea did contribute to O’Dea’s ousting to the backbenches.
US Republican Party vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin created a new word (albeit accidentally) when she asked “Peaceful Muslims, please refudiate” the proposed new mosque in a cultural centre in lower Manhattan.
Derek Simpson, joint head of the British union UNITE, got into trouble earlier this year for tweeting during deliberations with British Airways on ending the cabin crew strike. Simpson’s tweets were being followed by Socialist Workers’ Party members who gate-crashed the secret negotiations.
One conclusion from the Cowen/Coveney debacle is that we cannot, in the conventional Irish media, have a long-running debate on how the economy is being managed. We can, sadly, have a never-ending one on the drinking habits and private lives of our politicians.