The Sunday Tribune – Paris, property and pumping for Tony

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Tuesday November 14, 2006 17:27 by Professor Joe

Irish media and the race to the bottom

When a government turns the police on the people...when they say the people are provos....when people are kicked, battered, batoned and hospitalised...when it takes place on an international memorial day...when this is about building one of Europe's biggest gas refineries on a remote bog...when the plot is thick with court cases, compulsory orders, jailings, investigations and protests..when billions of Euros of natural gas are at stake...when the future of the planning process, of natural resource ownership and the remains of Irish democracy hang in the balance.....

....should this, or some of it, not feature in a major Sunday newspaper just 2 days after it features as a headline story in all national news outlets?

Not in the case of Ireland's Sunday Tribune. In last Sunday's edition the newspaper, read in Ireland by many on the so called 'left and centre left', didn't have even one story on what surely is one of the most important news stories of recent years, and perhaps decades.

Instead the Tribune featured stories of Reyjavik house prices, pre-Christmas PR students by Paris 'Irish' Hilton and Sony Playstation, reports from the U.S elections, features on 'the Pope's children', Richard Delevan mourning the Republicans loss of power (no…not Irish republicans!), and lots and lots of sport, entertainment . And of course there was the compulsory chunky 'let's go shopping' property section/s.

There was a nice business section feature on Anthony O’Reilly Junior’s plans to make Ireland the start of the European gas network via his growing Providence resources exploration company. This featured some minor references to corrib gas but this article was about Jnr having his say.

The Sunday Independent, owned by Sr. Anto O’Reilly Senior, and Murdoch's Sunday Times are of course guaranteed sources of news on 'the great Corrib gas controversy’, albeit with angles of slander, misinformation and scaremongering. 'Reds under the bed' kinda stuff.

In a country with one of the most centralised media industries in the world, where sales of Irish papers are under pressure from their 'mainland' Oirish editions, you would imagine that the Tribune would at least recognise that there is NEWS in Mayo.

Of course this would depend on not upsetting the O’Reilly dynasty (who own a chunk of the Tribune) and perhaps even travelling to Mayo, or speaking to someone who has. Perhaps even a freelancer might do the job. It would depend on a desire to uphold a basic level of news reporting and journalistic integrity. It would mean that The Sunday Tribune was serious about news.

Paris Hilton and Playstation are indeed part of Irish life but so too are people's rights to live without police violence and repression. So too is the question ownership of natural resources when
our health and education systems are under-developed. So too is a
tale of political and planning corruption.

Whatever the Tribune's editorial stance may be, surely if they are to at least pretend to be a half decent broadsheet, they should be covering and investigating the Corrib gas controversy
and all the murkiness that surrounds it.

Or then again, perhaps, as many (lazy) new media gurus would suggest, "We're only giving them people what they want."

2.30Euros each Sunday. What a cheek!