Sarah Carey, Geraldine Kennedy and the Lisbon hypocrisy of the Irish Times

Wednesday November 19, 2008 10:31

by Aragon

Brave Sarah Carey exposes editorial bias at the Times of London

Sarah Carey is apparently a responsible 'yes' voter when it comes to Lisbon. We will all therefore appreciate the terrible position she was put in when she discovered that The Times of London (Irish version) was banning all pro Lisbon pieces in its pages. Carey went along with this - for a good long while, in fact. She has just fetched up however in the pages of the Irish Times, that bastion of balanced and fair journalism (not), armed with a revivified conscience, describing the horrors of the editorial interference of Frank Fitzgibbon at the London Times and wishing she had had the courage to bring the truth of his editorial perfidy to the world before. Read her heart-rending tale here:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1119/1....html

Sarah tells us that when reading anything in a newspaper, we had better be asking ourselves who is writing it and what is their agenda. Quite so.

Carey is not the valiant whistleblower of shocking media revelation that this silly piece would have us believe. Beyond its usefulness to Madam's fury that the little people didn't do as they were told by her about Lisbon, it's really a pile of sefl-serving crap. The clear inference to be drawn is that had Fitzgibbon gone the other way and banned all 'no' coverage, she'd have seen that as the editorially superior position - being it tallied with her own 'yes' pov. She'd still be working away happily for him. However, having spotted an opportunity to curry favour with Kennedy and the IT, it's unlikely we'll be reading her in the pages of Fitzgibbon's Times again.

Another ludicrous aspect of Carey's piece is that it is fatally undermined by the fact that the media was screamingly pro Lisbon overall and still the vote went against it. The only reason she's writing this in the Irish Times is precisely because of the same phenomenon she is decrying at the London Times as at the Irish Times - which was outrageously, even hysterically unbalanced at times in its coverage of Lisbon - the more so as it became apparent that the vote was going the other way. If anything The Times of London was more honest about Lisbon - it took up a position and everyone reading it knew what it was - there was no pretence at faux 'balance'.

Not so with the IT which is positively devious in its malign use of the appearance of balance to create the illusion among its readers that they have the unvarnished truth of all aspects of a given topic. There is hardly a single subject covered in the Irish Times that is ever subjected to anything like the sort of editorial standard they claim to uphold. Geraldine Kennedy is exactly the sort of editor whose agenda Sarah Carey ought to be highly suspicious of. Watch the letters page for example. You'll notice that for every 'no' letter there are approximately 4 'yes' letters. The exact same thing applies to a range of subjects from Corrib Gas to anti war letters. And yet all of these issues are popularly thought of by a big majority of people in a way that is the polar opposite of the paper's obvious editorial bias. It seems highly unlikely that the paper would receive more letters from a minority view than it does from the majority - every time something controversial arises.

Having burned her bridges with Times of London and Rupert Murdoch, Carey is clearly anxious to get a little bit of sucking up in to ensure her future career in the Irish media:

In Britain, buying a particular newspaper title is an explicit statement of political allegiance. Here, the lines are blurred and so our sensitivity to the political motives behind editorial policy is dulled. Sure, The Irish Times has its whole Dublin 6-intolerant-liberal thing going on. There is also the problem of a "newsroom culture" in which without any actual coercion, journalists will eagerly adopt each other's views. The Sunday Independent runs brazen campaigns such as the one to canonise Bertie Ahern and demonise Brian Cowen. But even the Sindo has Gene Kerrigan, so regardless of what paper one buys, Irish readers can expect that writers' political agendas will be both upfront and balanced out, allowing them to casually absorb different opinions across the political divide.

This last statement is complete horsesht. Not least because it's written in a paper whose editor boldly declares that the paper's role is 'to lead and shape public opinion' . On top of that, the Irish media is possibly the least independent in the the whole of Europe. Gene Kerrigan, cited by Carey in her gushing about the indepence of the Irish media hardly suffices as a clover leaf over the privates of the otherwise hideously biased Sindo beast - long since the laughing stock of most sane Irish journalists - whether they are prepared to say so in public or not - and most especially being that their own version of 'Lord Sauron' (to whom Carey compares Rupert Murdoch), Tony O' Reilly, is just as eager with summary justice for errant journos writing critically of, say, his role in the oil and gas giveaway - to take just one of many examples that can be found.

It's beyond doubt that there are US interests who don't want a yes vote in this referendum and that Libertas is their front line in the argument. But they are up against an equally self-interested and media-manipulating agenda from the yes side - which is already hard at work. This piece by Carey is in itself a fairly vicious salvo from the yes side - dishonestly painting the pro-yes media as the beleaguered victims of an evil 'no' campaign.

One wonders what the longer term ramifications of having published this piece will be: the IT has broken a code of silence here about how newspapers actually work. All the bsht about how they strive for 'balance' and 'fairness' exposed for the bsht that it is. It will be interesting to see how the London Times retaliates.

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Comments (5 of 5)

Forgot to mention...

by Miriam

Wed Nov 19, 2008 13:32

...Kennedy's Irish Times is no stranger to dumping journalists who don't follow the script. Eddie Holt, Harry Browne to name just two. If she is so keen to prove the fairness of her newspaper why does she not immediately employ Joe MacAnthony one of the best and most courageous journalists Ireland has ever had and so shamfeully ignored by the craven Irish media.

Yesterday's Men (and Women)?

by Barney

Wed Nov 19, 2008 18:57

Allowing for the fact that we are now well into the Internet Age, and the many opportunities which organisations like Indymedia can easily provide these days for expressing individual viewpoints on virtually all subjects, from all angles, should we be concerning ourselves very much at this stage about the "kennedys" and the "murdocks" (etc, etc.) of this world? - other than to keep a close watch on them perhaps regarding the odd really important issue such as the Lisbon Treaty for example -- as they and their once great importance slowly fades into history.

It seems to me that, as the results of the Lisbon Treaty referendum earlier this year show, they are well on their way out as far as being a major source of influence in elections goes? - and albeit that they do still need to be very carefully watched, and exposed, as when their verbal trickery appears in public in really destructive ways: as it almost certainly will from time to time while they slowly sink down into their various cesspits of arrogance, ignorance, stupidity, greed, and so on.

And "good riddance to the bastards" I'd say? -- if that's what actually becomes of them eventually.

Evolution rules -- okay?

more...,

by Lackeys

Wed Nov 19, 2008 19:26

I.T are going rapidly downhill cos of speculation and investment . They are posting huge losses
and sixty staff are to be laid off. One presumes in order to pay Ms Carey's salary...,

In the meantime we can only hope that she gets to write that wonderful pro-lisbon Opinion Piece
that she so desires to write and that her every whim is catered to by Ms Kennedy, whom like
all PD's seems really, really good at destroying things of great value to many people.

Ms Kennedy currently heads up the Irish press Council and was appointed to it by Ex-Minister
Mc Dowell!

So why hasn't Ms Kennedy employed Journalists of integrity ?

they have all vanished or been relegated to the backpages by Ms Kennedy.

Well stuffed

by Brendan

Wed Nov 19, 2008 20:15

"Ms Kennedy currently heads up the Irish press Council and was appointed to it by Ex-Minister Mc Dowell!"

Small wonder the country is in the almighty mess it's now in?

Quo vadis, Irish Times?

by Fred Johnston

Fri Nov 21, 2008 01:54

The Irish Times has noticably toned down even the most informed kind of political and cultural analysis over the past few years, to the point where some journalists have compared it to a red-top, and probably rightly so. A few weeks ago, it had an essay on human rights written by the fictional character, 'Ross O'Carroll Kelly,' which I think said it all about the newspaper's direction and what it caters for. It has got rid of some of its more caustic and direct reviewers, myself being one but I am not alone, where once it would have stoutly defended them: reviewers were, in effect, to be promotional cogs in the cultural wheel and no criticism of writers (for instance) was to be tolerated. As with The Sunday Independent (and, significantly, they detest one another) The Irish Times retained an informed journalist such as Fintan O'Toole and created a weekend cultural and magazine section was was Dublinocentric in the extreme and youth-with-money orientated. It was now possible (so much for women's liberation!) to read articles about how a columnist was getting on with her boyfriend in a magazine of a newspaper which was once 'the paper of record.' Self-referencing was the norm. The Arts sections didn't bother to travel much farther West than Kildare. The newspaper, in effect, bowed to a conservative and intolerant political and cultural ethos, some components of which believed they had a right to impose their view of the world and no opposition would be brooked. The result, sadly, is a newspaper where standards have dropped: but dropped standards suit some areas of thought in modern Ireland; none of this happened by accident. The days of 'old school' investigative and critical journalism evaporated - under pressure?

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Sarah Carey, Geraldine Kennedy and the Lisbon hypocrisy of the Irish Times

Comments (5 of 5)