Part 2 of interview with Frank Connolly

national | arts and media | other press

Friday November 16, 2007 10:56

by Miriam Cotton & David Manning

FC discusses the way the media works - the pros and cons and acknowledges some of the contraints on journalists when they are trying to do seriously challenging investigative work.

Part 1 of the interview is here:

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85060

Part 2:

http://www.mediabite.org/article_Confronting-Power---Pa....html

Excerpt:

MB: There was one thing that we didn’t agree with that Fintan O’Toole said when we spoke to him. He said:

“This isn't some sort of conspiracy; you will have people going from one week as a senior journalist to the next week representing a major company back to other journalists. There are built in advantages in the way that operates. It's parallel to the reason why big business hires tax inspectors.” [6]

Do you agree that there are built in advantages to that? We would see this as being a very unhealthy thing – that there is this crossover.

FC: There are a number of consultants who work for several government departments while they also work as paid consultants for Fianna Fail and even for individual ministers. The same people write columns for various newspapers a position they use to promote people who include the clients that pay them. That’s a complete conflict of interest. There is also a conflict where people are going from positions in journalism to high-powered PR positions. That’s a trend anyway because they have communications skills and they bring a certain amount of insight into the media to their new positions but I think there is a danger there just as civil servants moving from very sensitive government positions to private companies without any lapse or break period has a huge potential for conflict of interest and has had in practical cases in this country. I think the same thing applies to journalism because it muddies that area between so called objective journalism, if there is such a thing, and public relations which is to promote particular business interests.