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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite
UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.

offsite link Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent
Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!

This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".

According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.

People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.

offsite link AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent
Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.

offsite link Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy
We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza

Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support

With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza

offsite link China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy
This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty

A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed.

The Saker >>

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link News Round-Up Mon Sep 22, 2025 00:43 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The BBC?s ?1 Billion Pension Bailout Sun Sep 21, 2025 19:47 | Richard Eldred
The BBC has poured over ?1 billion into its gold-plated pension scheme, gobbling up nearly ?850 million of licence fee money ? and it looks like the bill could keep climbing.
The post The BBC?s ?1 Billion Pension Bailout appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Education Secretary Launches Fresh Attack on Private Schools Sun Sep 21, 2025 17:13 | Richard Eldred
In a fresh raid that could force more closures and squeeze parents' wallets, Bridget Phillipson is hitting private schools again, this time tripling Ofsted inspection fees.
The post Education Secretary Launches Fresh Attack on Private Schools appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Keir Starmer Confirms Britain Will Ignore US and Israeli Anger and Recognise a Palestinian State Sun Sep 21, 2025 15:00 | Richard Eldred
Keir Starmer has sparked fury by pledging to recognise a Palestinian state even though critics say it rewards Hamas, angers Israel and the US and won't help hostages or feed Gaza's starving.
The post Keir Starmer Confirms Britain Will Ignore US and Israeli Anger and Recognise a Palestinian State appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link North Sea ?Has Three Times More Oil and Gas? Than Government Claims Sun Sep 21, 2025 13:00 | Richard Eldred
Britain's North Sea could have 14 billion barrels of oil and gas ? three times what the Government reckons ? but sky-high taxes and drilling bans are leaving it in the ground while jobs and cash go begging.
The post North Sea ?Has Three Times More Oil and Gas? Than Government Claims appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Ignorance, avoidance, distortion – media coverage of the Corrib gas project has failed

category national | rights, freedoms and repression | other press author Wednesday February 05, 2014 23:53author by shell2c Report this post to the editors

The Irish media has failed to properly report on the local community’s resistance to Shell in Mayo. The reason? Journalism has fewer and fewer resources to filter the truth from the propaganda, Harry Browne writes.
540billioneuro_worth_of_gas.jpg

The basic reason is pretty simple: they’ve got more and more resources (money, time, people) to push the corporate or government line, and we’ve got fewer and fewer with which to filter out the truth from the propaganda.

And when PR people are good and do their job really well, they get the ears of our bosses and make our jobs even harder.

That’s what happened to Betty Purcell, a TV producer who recently took early retirement from RTE after many years in charge of programmes including Questions & Answers and The View. In 2009 she tried to make a short human-interest documentary in RTE’s quasi-religious slot Would You Believe? about Willie and Mary Corduff, residents of Rossport, Co Mayo, who stopped Shell from running a gas pipeline through their land.

“One day the director Geraldine Creed and the reporter Mick Peelo got a call saying that a Shell PR man was in the RTE canteen and would they go down and talk to him,” Purcell recalled. He tried to persuade Purcell’s team to drop or change the programme.

The programme got made only after its dedicated makers jumped through a unique and time-consuming series of management hoops – and RTE broke up the team soon after.

Reporting the community’s resistance to Shell


Purcell (whose memoir Inside RTE will be published next month) was telling this story last Saturday near Rossport, in Ceathrú Thaidhg, Co Mayo, at ‘Airing Corrib: The Media and Shell Corrib’, organised by Action from Ireland (AfrI). I joined her on the platform, as did Liamy MacNally, formerly a much-admired journalist with Mayo-based Midwest Radio.

Last month MacNally won a case for unfair dismissal against the station. Although the employment tribunal did not accept that he had been targeted for his coverage of the Corrib gas project, MacNally was able to describe to the Mayo audience the years of flak that rained down on his journalism whenever he broadcast or wrote about the community’s resistance to Shell.

For most journalists with a busy job to do, this sort of thing becomes a good reason to ignore a story, or at least avoid its more ‘controversial’ elements. In contrast, public relations professionals working for Shell have all the time in the world to advance the company’s perspective, which, more often than not, then slides unopposed into the news agenda.

There is nothing particularly sinister about this. After the initial period of heroic coverage of the ‘Rossport Five’ (including Willie Corduff) in 2005, Shell has simply outgunned its opponents in PR terms, creating the image of a reasonable, flexible company trying to provide employment in Mayo but besieged by hysterical and perhaps-dodgy ‘protesters’.

Ignorance, avoidance and distortion

Richie O’Donnell’s beautiful feature-length documentary The Pipe, which provides an alternate perspective, has won awards here and abroad and been sold to dozens of broadcasters across the world, but, incredibly, it has never been shown on RTE.

But last week’s event in Mayo wasn’t just a chance for journalists such as Purcell and MacNally to say how their work on the Corrib story had been resisted by PR pressure and by their employers; it also gave plenty of time for others, including locals, to offer testimony about the ignorance, avoidance and distortion they have experienced at the hands of the media over the last decade.

Some of the stories were comic – but when another of the Rossport Five, Vincent McGrath, ran through a long detailed list of year-upon-year of media errors and sins on the story, it was clear this community’s grievance is no joke. Along with many State bodies the media have, by and large, allowed their message to be coordinated by the effective PR operation of one of the most powerful companies in the world, one that sits right on top of the Fortune 500.

And while we can understand how that has happened, it’s not what journalism is supposed to be all about.

Related Link: http://shelltosea.com/content/ignorance-avoidance-distortion-%E2%80%93-media-coverage-corrib-gas-project-has-failed
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