Category: Media coverage

For Marian Finucane's information…

One of the ‘sensational’ claims made by David Drumm to journalist Niall O’Dowd was that Central Bank and the Financial Regulator knew everything that was going on in Anglo and that they in fact acted as a ‘team’ throughout 2008.

O’Dowd admitted that he was completely unaware of this situation and clearly sees it as a major, new, news story.

Finucane was also astonished on hearing the claim. It would be quite extraordinary, she gasped.

Such ignorance from O’Dowd is understandable, he lives in America and is obviously not the brightest of journalists.

But there is no excuse for Finucane who has, for decades, been at the centre of events in Ireland.

She must know (or maybe she doesn’t) that the Dept. of Finance, the Financial Regulator and senior politicians knew about the DIRT fraud, knew about the Ansbacher fraud and knew about dozens of other frauds within the Irish financial sector over the decades.

The authorities never took any action to bring these frauds to an end. The criminals were allowed free rein to plunder the state and its citizens at will, without fear of ever being brought to justice.

And just for Marian Finucane’s information, the situation remains exactly the same as I write.

That is, there is still no financial regulation in Ireland when it comes to the financial sector; crime is still rampant within the sector.

Copy to:
Marian Finucane

Niall O'Dowd: Completely fooled by David Drumm

Niall O’Dowd is an Irish American journalist and author, he’s also a very gullible individual.

He spoke to Marian Finucane (Sunday) about an interview he conducted earlier this month wth former CEO of Anglo Irish Bank, David Drumm, in which the disgraced banker poured his heart out.

Now, the first question that any competent journalist would ask himself is – what’s this man’s agenda, why is he so eager to speak to a journalist?

O’Dowd never noticed that he was being used and fell for Drumm’s bullshit hook, line and sinker.

Some quotes:

He wanted to make his side of the story plain; I think he felt he had been the victim of a witch hunt in Ireland both in the media and personally.

He wanted to give an interview to a journalist in America rather than in Ireland, he was more comfortable with that scenario.

I’ll bet he was and he made a good choice – an obviously uninformed and naïve journalist.

What I was looking for Marian was the human story because behind all these great scandals there are lives and that’s what I tried to bring out in the interview.

I think you’re looking at a guy in very deep anguish for all the obvious reasons.

What was interesting to me was his very deep sense that he was one of many yet he felt he’s been singled out.

Ahhhhh, wouldn’t your heart be broken listening to such tragedy?

RTE is in the process of making the biggest mistake in its history

RTE is in the process of making the biggest mistake in its history.

The national broadcaster had a simple choice following the finding that its Prime Time Investigates programme had grossly defamed parish priest Fr. Kevin Reynolds.

It could have made public all the relevant facts surrounding the case and taken severe action, including sackings, against those responsible for the debacle.

Or

It could have decided to creep into the dank cave of darkness where bankers, politicians, higher civil servants and the Catholic Church thrive on a diet of secrecy, obfuscation, denial and arrogance.

Sadly, the broadcaster is heading for the darkness of the cave.

Those in charge in RTE have clearly deluded themselves into thinking that they can bluff their way out of the affair while retaining the very high level of respect and credibility built up over many years by Prime Time and Prime Time Investigates.

They have, in effect, decided to inflict serious damage to the credibility of the organisation as a whole and 100% damage to the credibility of the Prime Time programme.

And for what?

So that those responsible for the debacle are protected from the consequences of their actions.

If they continue as they are Prime Time will rightly be seen as nothing more than a joke programme.

Lying politicians, priests, bankers and others who have, until now, rightly feared the dreaded call from Prime Time staff will now welcome the opportunity to strut the Prime Time catwalk and sneer at questions put to them by a totally discredited programme.

RTE should immediately apologise for attempting to avoid responsibility and follow that up by taking the painful but crucially necessary action to protect Prime Times’ hard won credibility.

There is no alternative.

Copy to:

RTE
Prime Time

Pat Kenny on Irish maturity

Discussion on Today with Pat Kenny.

Pat Kenny: The ECB, it’s as much our Central Bank as it is the Germans. We can, if we want, implement changes in policy.

Panelist: But the cheque will, ultimately, be written by the Germans and they’re not going to write the cheque having been let down.

They don’t want to write a cheque in advance of the reforms they’re looking for from Greece, Italy and the rest.

Kenny: The Germans got very big cheques written for them after World War Two, they shouldn’t forget that.

Panelist: They’re not likely to back the solution we would like without trusting that the maturity of the political systems in Ireland or Greece will step up to the plate.

Kenny: Haven’t we, at least in the short term, demonstrated quite a lot of maturity?

Panelist: We have and that’s why we’re seen as the good guys in Europe.

Amazing isn’t it? Pat Kenny, a citizen of a failed state ruled by a crowd of corrupt gombeens, telling the Germans they should be grateful for money given to them by the Americans.

The Germans used that money to create one of the richest, most democratic, most accountable countries in the world.

That success allowed them to hand over about €30 billion to gombeen Ireland to bring the country from the 16th to the 21st century.

And what did our ‘mature’ ruling elite do with the money?

They blew it on a ponzi building boom that enriched the corrupt politicians, bankers and developers while impoverishing the rest of the population for generations to come.

Joe Duffy loses the head

In fairness, Joe Duffy did his very best to hide his contempt for Martin McGuinness on Liveline today but, in the end, he lost the head.

Joe attempted for a short time to remain balanced but it soon became obvious that callers who supported McGuinness were, let’s be kind here, ‘robustly’ challenged by Joe while those opposed to the former IRA man were allowed to make their point without serious interruption.

Joe: If Martin McGuinness committed crimes he should be in prison.

Caller: The Good Friday Agreement dealt with all of that. The UVF prisoners were all let out.

Joe: (Shouting down the caller).

Hang on, Larry Murphy of the Shankill Butchers is not standing for president of Ireland…how would you react if Larry Murphy was to put himself forward and get the support of twenty of our parliamentarians, tell me how you would react.

The caller attempted to respond but Joe became hysterical.

Joe: You’d vomit.

Caller tries again to make a point.

Joe: You’d vomit.

Caller: No Joe, I wouldn’t.

Joe: You would.

I think we can safely say that Martin McGuinness’ entry into the fray has finally launched the election campaign; I think it’s going to be very interesting.

John Waters' rant

Irish Times columnist, John Waters, is ranting today about the ‘ideological corruption’ of the Irish media regarding the David Norris controversy.

There are some very interesting comments on the article. This one, by ‘Adam’, is worth reproducing in full.

Adam

John, since this story originated with a blogger, I was hoping you were going to write an article retracting your view that blogs and bloggers are stupid. Who am I kidding?

As regards the comparisons with bishops, there is of course a large difference between a misguided appeal for clemency for a convicted abuser and the attempt to cover-up abuse so that an abuser may escape prosecution. That is why bishops are more harshly treated by the media, and rightly so. That doesn’t make Norris right, but the comparison with the behaviour of bishops is incorrect.

And John, you’re not immune to media bias yourself. You tried in your article last week to portray the Church as some sort of doddering old victim of the liberal media (and indeed you’ve portrayed the Pope – who’s a great chap altogether – as a victim in previous articles) when, of course, that is not the truth at all.

You see the church overall as a hero, as a “good guy”, so you are inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. This is exactly what is happening on the other side of the political divide. People see Norris as a “good guy” and they are inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Is it right? No, of course not.

But, it’s like the way your fingers twitch instinctively for the words “aggressive” or “militant” when you write “secularist” or “atheist” when you really just mean someone who is is an outspoken advocate for both. You would never use the words to describe the Pope, even though in context he’s just as “aggressive” or “militant”, because your bias weighs heavily on your fingers.

You cannot seriously call for fair mindedness in journalism when you, only last week, called members of the Labour party “atheist ayatollahs”!?

You wrote an article once about Atheist Ireland where you claimed that if two of your friends were given half an hour and a microphone the would change the minds of almost every atheist in the room (without ever explaining what those friends would actually say). Only a person who was a slave to their own bias could make such a claim. Incidentally, Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion bemoans the fact that his entire book will not change the minds of but a relatively few religious people who read it, and your fingers will still twitch for the word “arrogant” when you write about him.

In short, John, there is a degree of truth about this article, but you certainly aren’t the one to be casting stones.

Brendan Keenan: A disturbingly ignorant journalist

During a discussion on nepotism and cronyism Irish Independent economics editor, Brendan Keenan made the following comment:

We have certainly seen in Britain an appalling decline of standards in Parliament and I think we’ve seen some signs of that spreading over here.

It’s difficult to know where to start analysing such a disturbingly ignorant statement.

It seems that Keenan labours under the illusion that, apart from some contamination from the UK, Ireland is a fully functional, democratically accountable state where politicians seldom, if ever, engage in corrupt practices.

First, let me give a broad outline of what happened in the UK when the expenses scandal broke.

There was genuine and widespread anger throughout the land including among the body politic. Politicians were ruthlessly challenged on the matter by a professional and well informed media. Some MPs were even physically attacked by their constituents such was the anger at this theft of public funds.

The police were involved from the very beginning and ultimately succeeded in sending a number of politicians to jail. At least a third of MPs were either sacked or forced to resign and the Government introduced tough new legislation as a result of the scandal.

The theft of taxpayer’s money by Irish politicians is rampant and has been for decades, the practice is an integral and long accepted aspect of the corrupt political system.

The majority of Irish citizens have no problem with such practices so long as their local gombeen representative continues to dispense petty favours.

The police never, ever act against such corruption. The Ivor Callely scandal is a case in point. When a formal complaint was made against Callely the Garda Commissioner, the highest ranking policeman in the state, effectively put the investigation on hold because he was waiting for ‘more clarification’ from a lowly civil servant.

To my knowledge he’s still waiting.

The media, for the most part, are ineffective in challenging the corrupt politicians through a combination of grovelling subservience and/or low journalistic standards.

To be precise here, the Irish media are good at uncovering corruption and even at asking the right questions but almost never stay the course in demanding answers.

Irish politicians have long ago copped on to this and so respond by just throwing out the first excuse/lie that comes to mind and it’s off to the next scandal.

New legislation in response to political corruption never seems to be actually fit for purpose. This, of course, is no accident.

The recent ‘reform’ of TDs expenses, for example, allows them to steal a good portion of their allotment if they so wish, with no questions asked.

This type of legal corruption is rampant within the political system and throughout the ruling class.

One of the crucial weaknesses of how Ireland is governed is the total absence of any law enforcement authority capable of operating independently of the corrupt political system.

The media, for all its faults and weaknesses, is the only force in the land capable of challenging that corrupt system; it’s the only force that provides any protection for ordinary Irish citizens.

That’s why it’s so disturbing to witness such an ignorant display from such a prominent journalist.

Copy to:

Brendan Keenan

Greece v Ireland

Yet another ‘expert’, Dan O’Brien, tells us how bad things are in corrupt and dysfunctional Greece.

The background suggestion is that Ireland, while not in the best of shape, is a normal, functional state.

A reader responded to the article.

Let’s repeat that sentence. “IRELAND is a borderline failed state. its society lacks cohesiveness and is deeply divided its economy is in shock.

If the country’s history is any guide to its future, there is serious trouble ahead”…… by the end of this year, 300,000 people will have emigrated and 450,000 people are currently unemployed with youth unemployment hovering around 40%.

There is not a single government worker capable of being paid without the bailout money borrowed at 5.83%. People in glass houses should not throw stones.

It is less than a week since our Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dail that he could do nothing about nepotism at the heart of his government.

Jobs paid for with state funding or borrowing, for which no citizen is allowed to apply? Can that be legal. If it is have we legalised nepotism?

George Lee: Advising the Greeks

Dr. Labros Chatziz, president of the Hellenic Community (In Ireland) and co-owner of the River Medical Group was on The Business this morning discussing the growing financial crisis in Greece and the Irish government’s negotiations in Europe.

The presenter, George Lee, put it to Dr. Chatzis, that tax evasion was rampant in Greece.

Yes, tax evasion is a national sport. Unfortunately, the only people who are paying tax in Greece are people on salaries; all the professions are tax evaders.

George didn’t intervene here to say that the situation is the same in Ireland, he allowed the doctor to continue.

I’m ashamed to say you have doctors, like me, who have been declaring €10,000 income for the past ten years. When the taxman went in they found yachts, swimming pools and mansions.

Again, George didn’t intervene here to say that the situation is worse in Ireland because ordinary and long suffering taxpayers are still waiting for the taxman to act against the rich tax evaders.

But this is done by everybody in Greece. It’s the mentality and this is the big difference with Ireland. In Ireland it’s not like that.

Once again, George didn’t intervene to say that the mentality is exactly the same in Ireland; that Ireland is exactly like Greece.

Instead George went on to advise the doctor that his country will have to end its culture of tax evasion and added, that it’s not a banking crisis his country is suffering from but a fiscal crisis.

Clearly, George is of the same mind as the Minister for European Affairs, Lucinda Creighton. He seems to believe that Ireland is a normal functional state that just happens to be suffering from a temporary banking crisis.

The doctor went on to explain how the already severe austerity measures were being imposed on people who were already paying high taxes.

They’re squeezed even more; I can’t believe how much more they can give. Now you will be taxed for the size of the house you live in on top of the stamp duty.

And that’s just driving them nuts, said George, helpfully, without the slightest hint that he was aware of the raft of similar taxes about to be imposed on ordinary Irish taxpayers.