Misuse of Media

I’m going to say some­thing good about the Irish media here, so note the time and date because it doesn’t hap­pen often.

Inso­far as the media has a propen­si­ty to become a par­tic­i­pant in polit­i­cal affairs here, as opposed to sim­ply report­ing and com­men­tat­ing on them, recent devel­op­ments around the government’s Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit (SCU) give cause for even more con­cern than usu­al. But it also has to be said that the assid­u­ous work in expos­ing the manip­u­la­tion of media for polit­i­cal advan­tage by some jour­nal­ists war­rants acknowl­edg­ment and grat­i­tude from those of us who wor­ry con­stant­ly about the state of media in Ire­land. In par­tic­u­lar, the work of Hugh O’Connell in, and of, the Sun­day Busi­ness Post has been real­ly impor­tant for the demo­c­ra­t­ic process in recent weeks. Oth­ers such as the Sun­day Time’s Jus­tine McCarthy also deserve spe­cial men­tion.

Before look­ing at the SDU and how your tax­es are being used by the Taoiseach and Fine Gael to advance the cause of the Taoiseach and Fine Gael, it is impor­tant to look at this issue in a wider con­text.

Lis­ten­ing to the leader of Fian­na Fail in the past week one could be mis­tak­en for believ­ing that the use of the media by those run­ning the coun­try to fur­ther their own ends began last sum­mer, and that he and his par­ty had no ‘form’ in this regard. But we know oth­er­wise. A TV3 doc­u­men­tary ‘Print And Be Damned’ aired in 2013 and in it Anne Har­ris, for­mer­ly of the Sun­day Inde­pen­dent, shed light on the dis­grace­ful run up to the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion. The events are also set out in an arti­cle by the Examiner’s Michael Clif­ford apt­ly head­ed ‘Bertie And The Sin­do : An Affront To Democ­ra­cy’, and they pro­vide an invalu­able insight into the shock­ing and sor­did behav­iour of then Taoiseach, and head of Fian­na Fail, Bertie Ahern.

At the time Ahern was up to his neck try­ing to explain wads of cash up his chim­ney, mas­sive wins on the hors­es, why a sit­ting Taoiseach didn’t have a bank account, and much else about his per­son­al and par­ty finances at the Mahon Tri­bunal. Then one day he bumped into the Sun­day Inde­pen­dent Edi­tor Aen­gus Fan­ning in the Shel­bourne Hotel. It was April 2007, and after 5 years of gov­ern­ment and per­son­al scan­dal Ahern was run­ning out of time, and rope. There was much inter­est and spec­u­la­tion about exact­ly when the elec­tion would be but rather than just ask, Fan­ning took a less direct route with the sit­ting Taoiseach. He advised Ahern that the Sun­day Inde­pen­dent had a mas­sive file on mat­ters per­tain­ing to Ahern and the Tri­bunal and that it was ‘explo­sive stuff’. Would the Taoiseach hap­pen to have any sto­ries that he might sup­ply the SINDO with? They’d be par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the elec­tion date?

Ahern didn’t respond direct­ly but a few weeks lat­er, on a Sat­ur­day – print day for Sun­day papers – he called the paper with some news. He was going to dis­solve the gov­ern­ment and trig­ger an elec­tion, he would be going to Aras an Uachtarain the fol­low­ing morn­ing, but not ‘until after you’re off the press with the first edi­tion’. By this means the dis­so­lu­tion of the 29^th Dáil was announced, unusu­al­ly, on a Sun­day, and it is said even many of Ahern’s cab­i­net col­leagues didn’t know about it before the SINDO announced it. Har­ris also con­firmed that, there­after, Ahern gave many sto­ries exclu­sive­ly to the Sun­day Inde­pen­dent, some­thing that became obvi­ous to read­ers over time.

In that elec­tion Fian­na Fail man­aged to return to office thanks to a Green Par­ty coali­tion. They did so despite the impend­ing and unprece­dent­ed finan­cial cat­a­stro­phe that they had sown in pre­vi­ous years, and the frankly embar­rass­ing rev­e­la­tions about the finan­cial deal­ings of the Taoiseach that dom­i­nat­ed the ear­ly part of the elec­tion cam­paign. No mat­ter. Ahern was elect­ed Taoiseach for a third time, much to the approval of the Sun­day Inde­pen­dent.

Micheal Mar­tin was a cab­i­net mem­ber (Min­is­ter for Enter­prise, Trade and Employ­ment) when this hap­pened and I won­dered again last week, did he as a Min­is­ter know the extent to which his par­ty leader was manip­u­lat­ing the media for par­ty advan­tage, or did he read about it over his corn­flakes in the Sun­day Inde­pen­dent?

So what has changed under Fine Gael? Well we have a first-time Taoiseach, shiny and new and full of vim. I’m sure he has a bank account, I doubt he puts cash up a chim­ney, and if he has ever dark­ened a bookie’s I’d be a tad sur­prised. But he sure as hell seems to share Fian­na Fail’s pen­chant for using the media for the advance­ment of him­self, and his par­ty. And in his case he is doing it by spend­ing lit­er­al­ly mil­lions of Euro of taxpayer’s mon­ey telling those very tax­pay­ers how great they all are.

We are being pro­pa­gan­dised by gov­ern­ment at our own expense.

The SDU was one of Leo Varadkar’s first ini­tia­tives on becom­ing Taoiseach, head­ed by PR guru John Con­can­non. The unit has 14 staff and an annu­al bud­get of €5m. From the out­set, a sus­pi­cious pub­lic have wor­ried that the role of the unit is to use tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to ‘spin’ like hell in the inter­ests of Fine Gael and Varad­kar, as opposed to pro­vid­ing essen­tial pub­lic infor­ma­tion about gov­ern­ment ser­vices in an effi­cient and cost-effec­tive man­ner, its claimed role.

That claim now looks very shod­dy giv­en the furore cre­at­ed by the man­ner in which the gov­ern­ment strat­e­gy plan ‘Ire­land 2040’ has been com­mu­ni­cat­ed. Leav­ing aside the mas­sive reheat­ing of poli­cies and announce­ments long made and yet to be deliv­ered in the plan, it turns out that news­pa­pers coun­try­wide were paid for ‘adver­to­ri­als’ made to look like media news and com­men­tary. Some were even adorned with Fine Gael elec­tion can­di­dates, grin­ning as only elec­tion can­di­dates can grin, in key mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies. ‘Vote for me, look what I’m get­ting for you’ seemed to be the mes­sage. And all paid for by us, the tax­pay­er.

Varad­kar has attempt­ed to defend this by argu­ing uncon­vinc­ing­ly that the unit oper­ates at arms-length from gov­ern­ment. He repeat­ed­ly states this. This is uncon­vinc­ing because, thanks to the Sun­day Busi­ness Post per­sist­ing with ques­tions about the unit, the Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er forced Varadkar’s Depart­ment to release doc­u­ments that say the very oppo­site. One such doc­u­ment, writ­ten by John Con­can­non him­self, makes it clear that the effec­tive­ness of the SCU:

‘will be depen­dent on reg­u­lar struc­tured access to senior gov­ern­ment deci­sion-mak­ers and process­es’.

So much for ‘arms-length’! Caught out, Varad­kar has now ordered a review of the unit that, hope­ful­ly, will lead to its abo­li­tion.

Fine Gael have led government(s) here since 2011, despite the fact that in 2016 less than 1/5 of those enti­tled to vote for them did so. Over 80% of the elec­torate reject­ed the par­ty of gov­ern­ment. And Bertie Ahern was elect­ed Taoiseach three times, despite mas­sive issues about his finances, behav­iours, cor­rup­tion and crony­ism, and fol­low­ing poli­cies pur­sued through­out his tenure that utter­ly wrecked a nation. Yet Varad­kar is Taoiseach and Ahern is said to have ambi­tions to be our Pres­i­dent!

The media play a key role in these events and the extent to which, even in the dig­i­tal age, tra­di­tion­al media shape pub­lic atti­tudes should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.  That media, by and large, is there to defend the vest­ed inter­ests of the rich and pow­er­ful. That is why it’s the rich and pow­er­ful that own and con­trol it.

In that con­text the rela­tion­ship that gov­ern­ment  – and our Taoiseach – has with the media, and how the com­mu­ni­ca­tions we pay for are used, should always be dis­tanced, pro­fes­sion­al and eth­i­cal. When those rela­tions result in media act­ing as pup­pets of gov­ern­ment or a Taoiseach (whether it is paid or unpaid pup­petry) it is, as the Exam­in­er right­ly called it in 2013 ‘An Affront To Democ­ra­cy’.

The Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit should be abol­ished.

ENDS