Michael McDowell's Boswell

national | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Thursday January 12, 2006 19:33

by Elephant O'Room

Sam Smyth, has never uttered an unfawning word about his Minister. Such loyalty brings rewards....

From this weeks Phoenix article, on Michael McDowell and Sam Smyth.

Judith Miller Journalism 101...

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Michael McDowell's Boswell

That double act against Frank Connolly by Michael McDowell and Sam Smyth is only the latest in a series
of collaborations down the years between the justice minister and his Boswell at the Indo.

Smyth became part of a coterie of politicians, lawyers and hacks – PJ Mara, Adrian Hardiman, Gerry Danaher, McDowell, Eamon Dunphy and others – who frequented the Unicorn, Nesbitts and the Shelbourne in the ’90s and whose proximity to power and information was Sam Smyth manna to a journalist.

When Smyth was preparing his book Thanks a Million Big Fella, which concerned Ben Dunne’s dealings with Squire Hockey and Michael Lowry, he was given the run of McDowell’s Ranelagh constituency office to bash out the book. And when the book’s publishers, Folen’s, were hauled into court by photographer Eamon Farrell to issue an apology for doctoring Farrell’s photo on the front cover of the book, it was McDowell who acted for the publishers. The book launch some weeks later saw McDowell centre stage and he was one of the few politicians, amongst a throng of hacks, to attend the bash.

In 2001, McDowell (then Attorney General) and Micheál Martin took the unusual step of inviting heavy hitters from the world of radio to Government Buildings for a briefing on the imminent referendum on abortion legislation. RTÉ’s Aine Lawlor, David Hanly, Sean O’Rourke and Ryan Tubridy composed what was described as a “select number of radio presenters” and these elite broadcasters may have been surprised at the inclusion amongst their number of Smyth, presenter of Today FM’s Sunday Supplement, which commands a rather smaller audience than the RTÉ heavy hitters’ programmes.

Come the 2002 general election and Dublin South-East Green TD John Gormley, greener than usual at the amount of air time his constituency rival, McDowell, was getting on Smyth’s show, requested a small redress of this imbalance with a slot on the programme but was fobbed off with vague and unfulfilled pledges by Smyth’s team.

In 2004, Enda Kenny became apoplectic with rage, comparing McDowell to Mugabe (surprisingly, there was no diplomatic protest from Zimbabwe) when the Justice Minister released a reply to Kenny’s Freedom of Information query about births to non- nationals in hospitals to a newspaper first. McDowell said he had done so because “I will not enable my opponents to spin against me without having at least the opportunity to put my side of the story into the public domain”. And who was the lucky journalist that McDowell released the FOI answer to? Why, non other than than his very own Boswell, Sam Smyth.
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For more see

Never an unfawning word – and lavishly repaid
http://www.villagemagazine.ie/article.asp?sid=1&sud=40&aid=932

And,

http://www.villagemagazine.ie/contents.asp?iid=75

McDowell accused of playing dangerous game
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/12/18/story10524.asp