Next time you open up the Indo and see a vomit-inducing hagiographic puff-piece about His Royal Highness 'Sir' Tony O'Reilly, remember this.Or when you wince as the Irish Times lectures you like a prissy maiden aunt about how you should vote in a referendum, remember this.Or when you peruse the rows of red top tabloids and sneer at the garish pictures of scantily clad starlets and schlock headlines in a superior manner, remember this.Freedom of the press is a privilege we enjoy. With it comes things we are interested in hearing and happy to be informed about. With it also comes lectures, preposterous opinions, spin, fluff, puff and outright nonsense on all too many occasions.But that's the point of diversity of opinion and press freedom. It permits all sorts of truths to be told, in a...
Some of you may recall a little storm in the Irish blogosphere (or a tea cup, you decide) earlier this month.Shane Hegarty at the Irish Times spotted how a PR firm trying to peddle salty snacks had come up with the wheeze of creating a fake blog about Irish celebs.Shane is not the poison pen here. He is a good journalist and this was good, albeit not earth-shattering, investigation.Actual Irish bloggers soon stormed the site - justnutsabout - and deluged it in comments ranging from the outraged ("You fakes!") to the surreally hilarious (random lengthy quotes from The Bible.)The PR bunnies panicked, deleted all the nasty comments, and let the issue die down for a week or so. Then started spinning again. After all, where there's a will (and a retainer cheque) there's a way.And there's...
I like tabloids. There, I said it. I'm not a sexist neanderthal. I have an extensive education. I work in a decent job. I can understand abstract concepts. I also read a lot of broadsheets, magazines, websites and blogs.But I like tabloids, and I think ironically that they get a very bad press.This week, a court gave a convicted criminal and admitted fraudster nearly a million euro in a libel judgement against a tabloid, because they couldn't prove he was a drug dealer as they had said.Now, the chap in question had already been forced to make a payment to the Criminal Assets Bureau, who have stated that they believed he had made substantial amounts of money in Britain through drugs trafficking.But nevertheless, he sued for libel, and won 900,000 euro for the loss of his 'good name.'...
According to Irishwomen, that is. An Irish Times survey (subs required) has revealed that politics is the least important thing in my female contemporaries' lives. Only 9% rank politics as very important to them.Instead, financial independence was considered to be the most important thing to women. Hardly surprising in a society only half a generation from when women couldn't work after marriage in the state sector and when divorce was illegal.But the fact that hairstyles and personal grooming were considered more important, not only than politics, but also more important than friends is a bit of an eye-opener.Since men aren't considered worthy of polling in and of themselves, we won't get to see a similar poll of male attitudes. But I suspect that a similar poll would see men put family...
There really will, you know. That's what I'm afraid of.Some of you may recall I recently invited people to mail Ireland's laziest hackette with suggestions of what she could do with herself on Christmas Day.After all, she'd gone public asking people to do her work for her.For those waiting with bated breath to discover what all of our suggestions for La Ingle to do on Christmas Day led to, I can point you in the direction of the resulting 'article' here (if you have an Irish Times subscription.)Permit me to summarise for those too lazy or poor to access the real thing. In Ingle-land, you don't have to watch telly and eat too much on Christmas. You could go out and swim in the sea, or hillwalk, or do some charity work. But it's probably more fun to sit at home watching telly and eating too...
How much do you hate lazy journalism? Do you hate it as much as me? Does it make your eyes bug out of your head in despair when completely lazy hacks cog stories and ask other people to do the work for which they get paid?If so, you'll not be surprised to know that one of the Irish mediaocracy's shining lights, the aforementioned Roisin Bu-, sorry Roisin Ingle, desperately needs your help to do her work for her!Yes, you too can be a completely forgotten, unpaid researcher for La Ingle, as she seeks to duck responsibility for sourcing her own bloody stories.Simply email her with suggestions for things she could do on Christmas day, via the linky above. Any suggestions you like. After all, she did ask for it. So give it to her, this once, for me.Consider it my Christmas......