Has there ever been
a General Election campaign in Ireland before in which the role of some elements of the
mainstream media seemed so clear? Not to report the truth, or to compare
policies, but to cheer on the establishment parties and spread an irrational fear of
change.
For months now, we’ve
been told that this election is giving us a choice between “stability” (voting
for the parties who either bankrupt the country or imposed austerity on thousands
of us) and “chaos” (God forbid if those upstarts from Sinn Fein or the small
left wing parties came within a million miles of power).
Sometimes the mask
slips, and you wonder whether Irish democracy is any better than the kind of
electioneering you would find in modern day Russia or even North Korea.
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| Malcolm X had a jaundiced view back in the 1960s |
Such as when the
nation’s biggest selling newspaper gives over its main story to attacking Sinn
Fein policies for three days in a row. That’s not balanced election coverage,
that’s naked propaganda.
There is nothing
wrong with challenging a party which has a sinister past, especially if they
are a rising force on the brink of gaining power for the first time in the
Republic.
But where is the
investigative journalism into the policies of the Fianna Fail party which
caused the economic crash less than a decade ago? Are they really ready to
return to power?
And where is the
acknowledgement that, by going into power with the DUP and embracing the peace
process, Sinn Fein have actually come a long way in the space of a few years?
Where is the
analysis of why the Labour Party abandoned their core voters (and all their
principles) or why Fine Gael think it’s perfectly acceptable to punish so many
for the sins of so few?
The same newspaper
sent a representative, a crime reporter, onto the nation’s most popular chat
show at the weekend.
He managed to
insult hundreds of thousands of people on Friday night by suggesting that
anyone who votes for Sinn Fein is a drug-dealer, a killer, or a thug.
People have a right
to be concerned at the prospect of former terrorists going into Government, but
blatant scare-mongering is another thing.
I’m not a Sinn Fein
supporter, but I don’t need crime correspondent Paul Williams to ram his views
down my throat. A man who has made a lot of money out of crime, by writing
about it and spreading fear, Williams’ favourite word seems to be “scumbag”
when he talks about drug gangs.
It was hard not to
see his Late Late Show appearance as a hatchet-job on Sinn Fein just a week before
the election.
On the day after
his TV appearance, thousands of people marched through the streets of the
capital to protest against austerity. The Right 2 Change march merited just one
paragraph, and not a single photo, in one of the nation’s biggest selling
Sunday papers the following day.
Six days before the
election, thousands of people insisted that austerity was still a big issue. They
said that the march was about so much more than Irish Water. But a Rupert Murdoch-owned
‘paper decided their march did not merit any coverage, even though so many of them took over the city centre.
Across the city,
another editor was putting together a piece which suggested ten different reasons
not to vote for Sinn Fein. Which was fair enough, but you’d be waiting a long
time for ten different reasons not to vote for the party which bankrupt the
country in the first place.
Sadly, the people
who cover politics in Ireland largely move in the same circles as the political
masters they write about. They broadly share the same views, seeing nothing
wrong with the bank bailout or Ireland’s failure to stand by our Greek cousins when
they sought debt relief last year.
To support Syriza in their hour of need would have involved challenging the status quo and an admission that the Irish
were wrong. And nobody in the Irish Government wanted that!
So we get “fluffy”
pieces from the campaign trail, in which reporters get access to our leaders as
long as they play by their rules.
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| Still marching against Irish Water |
So they can spend days on the campaign trail with Enda Kenny or Lucinda Creighton, as long as
they never ask a tricky question such as why so many ordinary people had to
bail out a tiny group of unsecured bondholders, bankers, and developers.
Asking those type of questions is not part of the game and will soon get you thrown off the bandwagon.
Asking those type of questions is not part of the game and will soon get you thrown off the bandwagon.
Asking the
Taoiseach why so many people are languishing on hospital trolleys is not part of the accepted script, either, nor is questioning why so many people are put on Job Bridge
schemes in order to massage the unemployment figures.
This after all is
the “best little country in the world to do business in”, especially for the
multinationals who pay so little corporation tax compared to what they’d pay in
other countries.
This election is
all about the “recovery”, so it’s just not on to ask about the thousands who have
been made homeless, the rental crisis, or the mental health crisis which has
seen so many young people take their own lives in recent years.
Ask those questions
and you will be soon denied access to the great and the good.
So a young lad with
a video camera attends a “rally” in support of the Taoiseach in Castlebar, only to be
man-handled out of the premises by Gardai because he’s not part of the inner
circle. He hasn't learned how to play the game.
The “handlers”
choose who gets access to our Prime Minister, so those who want crisp copy for
the editors have to play by the rules. No hard questions about policies, when people keep talking about a recovery which seems to be on another planet as
far as many of us are concerned.
So we are given “colour
pieces” about An Taoiseach singing Bruce Springsteen songs to the faithful,
rather than insightful articles which might challenge why his party has imposed
such harsh austerity on those who could least afford to pay over the past five
years.
The man who is on
the verge of leading FG into office for a second term doesn’t like tough
debates or probing questions. And his handlers, with the complicity of key elements
of the media, ensure that he can get away with banal phrases most of the time.
When he allows the mask to slip, such as when he moans about “whingers” in his native Castlebar, the handlers
try their best to ensure he has minimum engagement with those who ask the
probing questions. The whole run-up to the election is perfectly scripted and
staged.
There’s a good
reason why Enda Kenny never appears on Tonight With Vincent Browne, he just can't cope with that kind of questioning. For our media, those kind of questions are reserved for People Before Profit or Sinn Fein, but the Taoiseach is largely left alone.
He is far more
comfortable pressing the flesh with little old ladies than answering tough
questions. He doesn’t stop for long enough on “walkabouts” for anyone to ask
anything that might make him or his party handlers uncomfortable.
His stage-managed
tours bring him to “positive” places, rather than the midland towns and city
housing estates deep in recession, which have yet to be touched by the
recovery.
So he talks about “recovery”
and “stability” and anyone who threatens his narrative is seen to support the
kind of “chaos” which will ensue if Sinn Fein, People Before Profit, the Social
Democrats, or the myriad of independent factions get anywhere near power.
And everyone plays
along. Access is granted if the hard questions are avoided. People can write
all day about how good he is at pressing the flesh, but they never get to ask a
serious question about issues such as homelessness, health care waiting lists,
or how schemes like JobBridge are abused.
In this election,
though, we should be grateful for social media. The landscape has been transformed. When people see videos of 100,000 people marching through Dublin city centre on Facebook, getting next to no coverage on national television, they begin to ask about pro-Government "spin".
More and more, people are beginning to ask questions about the information they are being fed.
We see Irish Water protesters being labelled as the "sinister fringe" on the TV news, but the only footage we see of Gardai beating up protesters is away from the mainstream media.
On Facebook or
Twitter, you can see photos of thousands upon thousands marching through the
streets of the capital to protest against austerity, even if those images rarely
end up in the national newspapers or on TV.
You can see the establishment politicians make fools of themselves, by trying to defend the indefensible in
unguarded moments on Twitter.
You can find out
about the parties’ policies by accessing their websites and avoiding the
scare-mongering among some elements of the media.
By all means,
question the policies of left wing groups such as PBP-AAA and Sinn Fein. A hung Dail, with so many Independents, is a scary thing. Perhaps
they would lead Ireland to ruin. Fianna Fail certainly should know – they led
Ireland to ruin only five short years ago.
By presenting
voters with a stark choice between “stability” and “chaos”, though, elements of
the establishment have gone too far.
People don’t like
to think they are being brainwashed or led a merry dance by those who have
hidden agendas or a vested interest in holding onto power.
There is some vile
stuff out there on social media, but it’s only there that you get a real taste
of the anger running through the housing estates and parts of rural Ireland over the past
five years. That anger surfaces at the Right2change protests, but rarely gets a look-in on national TV or our newspapers.
We have so many
sources of information in 2016 that people can see right through the “spin”, in a way which would have been unthinkable before the advent of Facebook and Twitter.
That can only be a good thing, when we’re sometimes faced with the kind of propaganda
which would not seem out of place in Russia or Cuba.
