Post by Scolaire Bocht on May 3, 2012 13:27:58 GMT
What follows is a reply to comments on this thread: www.politics.ie/forum/media/187103-media-deliberately-highlighting-trivial-issues-distract-people.html finishing with a long discussion of a model for modern Irish corruption.
vanla sighs
"Media deliberately highlighting trivial issues to distract people?
It's true to a large extent. Just yesterday The Indo had some really mundane stories leading on their homepage and further down hidden away were stories which should have been leading, laziness, bad journalism or done on purpose, on purpose would be my guess. If you take The Irish Times, often there are well deserving topical stories especially related to austerity, the EU etc which they don't even touch. The "mainstream" media has more or less been bought off I think, you'll get the odd piece that goes against the grain but by in large I think if someone did a dedicated analysis (which I'm not going to do, lol) I think you'd very quickly find the bias in the industry and it is rightwing and elitist and determined to ensure the wool is pulled over peoples eyes as much as possible."
A few days ago the Irish Independent, obviously Ireland's biggest daily newspaper, had the first five pages devoted to the unfortunate collapse of D J Carey. The sixth page was of some footballers that own a horse. There was a not a single line of news about any other issue in the first six pages of the paper!
human 19
"Regardless of your initial example of how someone hacked into some priest's house, then hacked into a drawer and removed a USB stick and inserted it into the computer and then hacked into his computer, and downloaded porn onto said previously pious USB stick...
I wouldn't say it has to be that complicated, probably various groups in the parish use the computers including the parish council and maybe a youth club etc.
Kevin Ryan
"Get with the plan, people.
Section 4.2.1 of "A Blueprint for Ireland's Recovery" (March 2011) makes clear the need for "balanced coverage" and "good news stories" in the national media.
"There needs to be a positive engagement with editorial and ownership/senior management of media
organisations in order to ensure we have balanced coverage and that good news stories are covered"
Establishment Ireland has spoken. And they know what's best for you, even if it can be hard to keep an eye on your compliance from [insert tax exile here]."
Very interesting, that Ireland First group which drew up the report consists of this rogue's gallery: Angela Kerins of Rehab, Philip Lynch (businessman), Michael Berkery (former chief executive of the Irish Farmers’ Association), John Bruton, Leslie Buckley (associate of Denis O'Brien), Pat Cox, Dermot Desmond, Frank Flannery (of FG), Ray MacSharry, Denis O’Brien, Seán O’Driscoll (Glen Dimplex), Michael O’Flynn (developer), Mike Soden (Bank of Ireland), Michael Somers, Dick Spring, Peter Sutherland, Brendan Tuohy (ex civil service sec gen). They are all very associated too with getting the EU treaties past I'd say e.g. the IFA was very prominent in that the last time.
Analyzer
"A news supplement to a property paper had two "economists" talking up the borrowing binge in the entire binge era. Some of the commentary was utterly disgraceful, and inaccurate.
And yet a large proportion of the population believed it, completely. In fact they let it influence their purchasing - in effect making the rich extremely rich, and mortgaging themselves into poverty for their entire working lives."
Yep, letting the media dictate to you their agenda is a very big mistake in modern times and unfortunately modern academia is almost as bad, huge herd instinct there to.
Telemachus
"I heard on tnsradio the cop had no licence or tax and only got an 800 euro fine for the incident that lead to him killing two people.
Saw nothing about this in the mainstream media before this."
Greenjerseyman
"I'll tell you one thing for certain. If you or I knocked down and Killed 2 people while driving without a licence, no tax and bald tyres, we would receive a lot more punishment than a 900 euro fine!"
True enough but for me its the other parts of the story that are the most interesting.
For the sake of argument imagine you were a satanic film director who was doing a snuff film trying to kill two guys on a motorway like this. Presumably you would drug the two guys and lay them out on the motorway and along comes the car and rolls over them and what happens? Probably at best you will have the car hitting and crushing the lungs of one of the guys and going over the legs of the other, you would hardly get both killed instantly, as was reported in this case. Remember this is only a saloon car hitting the two guys not some 8 wheeled articulated truck. Probably you would have to do the shoot again and measure the distance between the guys laid on the road to make sure that they exactly matched the distance between the front wheels of the car and then get the car coming along to exactly hit them so that each wheel went over one of the guys, or something like that.
The whole thing just seems so convolutedly unlikely...
Des Quirell
"Yet all of the counter-examples you provided *were* reported in the media.
Sometimes the media has to back off after reporting something because it is now the subject of judicial action"
I think thats a bit like Yes Minister, they throw in the legal excuse along with all the other excuses to do nothing. As nephin described, there is no shortage of media examples where they put the boot in when it suits them irrespective of any legal or privacy difficulties.
sondagefaux
"The Irish News circulates pretty much only in Northern Ireland.
...
And since when has the Herald been anything but a source of trivia?"
Well the Herald is supposed to be Ireland's leading Evening newspaper and the Irish News does circulate quite a bit in the South now.
Casillas
"Your examples aren't the best but I see what your getting at."
I think its not too bad though when I just restricted myself to the main headlines over two days of news.
cricket
"There is an issue about media ownership/ control in this country, but the OP here doesn't address it."
True thats a big issue alright but I think a bigger one is the question of state control of the news sources. I mean the vast vast majority of news stories related to justice issues originate with press releases from the Department of Justice and/or the Garda Press Office (as I waffle on about below) and if they had to name this source, during a radio news bulletin for example, then I think you would rapidly begin to realise just how Orwellian Ireland actually is right now!
Lonewolfe
"I hear ya barking there big dog but in my opinion (and experience) many media professionals take the path of least resistance - few are courageous and many are lazy.
I don't buy the conspiracy theory.
Despite O'Brien's monopoly, journalists have no steak in a "distracted" public. News is for sale - whatever makes it most appealing is the general rule of thumb."
Well thats an interesting point and I thought I might waffle on about that overall question. I think that most people in the media are not consciously involved in any 'conspiracy' but I think nonetheless the overall direction of the Irish media is indeed dominated by a deliberate line which is part of an overall 'conspiracy' in my opinion. So how do I square that circle is the question I guess. Well I think this is true of many fields and I call it:
The 5, 94, and 1% theory of modern day corruption.
In my opinion, for what its worth, I think you can divide the people involved in any politically important modern day profession into three sections of 5% at the top, the vast bulk of the rest at 94% and a few others in the 1% category.
5%
I think if you dig deep you will find about 5% of the practitioners in any particular field - e.g. members of the Dail, senior gardai and others in the security apparatus, and journalists - are these days consciously corrupt i.e. that they are cooperating with foreign intelligence agencies or Occult groups etc. I think this is very definitely true of Ireland despite what some might naievly think, but notice its only 5%, I am not saying that the bulk of Irish TDs or journalists are on the payroll of intelligences agencies or whatever. But I think these are the most influential 5% of journalists, and TDs etc, hence the real power bases in the various newspapers, e.g. the Harrises in the case of the Sunday Independent and earlier in RTE, who may or may not be the actual editors, and the party leaders in the Dail, certainly Kenny, Martin, Mary Lou MacDonald, Gilmore etc, are consciously corrupt in my opinion and are working to a 'conspiratorial agenda'.
1%
Then on the opposite side of the fence to them you have about 1% of politicians and journalists etc who are out there scrapping to really unearth corruption and do the right thing at all times. Notice I put this figure very small and yet a lot of people think that most journalists, for example, are like that, courageous investigative reporters anxious to unearth all wrongdoing etc etc. But its not like this at all, the vast vast majority of TDs and journalists, and what have you, will not do anything in modern times to jeopardise their careers by going up against the real power brokers out there, except a few stray honest people that do their level best, like in my opinion the three former MEPs, Patricia McKenna, Kathy Sinnott and in England Ashley Mote. Notice too from that list how much the good guys are artificially divided among themselves across the various isms that are out there, exaggerated political divisions that give us a type of divide and conquer effect.
94%
So the vast bulk of any group is this 94%, somewhere in the middle between the guys who are openly corrupt and cooperating with what they perceive to be the dominant power and the guys at the other end who are standing up at all times for the ordinary people.
I would divide this group also into about two equal sections. I would say one section (A) is softly corrupt as it were i.e. they would be the type of people who would have heard a few disquieting stories but they keep their head down and cooperate with their party in the hope of being appointed ministers, in the case of TDs, or otherwise receive some largesse for their cooperation and silence. In otherwords they are not taking brown envelopes but they are conscious something is wrong and are nonetheless quite content to go with the flow for their own personal legal, but corrupt, aggrandisement.
Then the other section (B) of any modern group will on the otherhand normally do the right thing as they perceive it, in otherwords they are not the kind of people who get up in the morning trying to feather their own nest as such, they might in fact have put in a lot of honest work, as TDs say, for the good of others. But a big problem with this group is often their naivety and also they might not be well educated about political corruption, dismissing all talk of intelligence agencies as 'conspiracy stuff' etc, they haven't heard about that evil in the media so it doesn't really exist and hence they don't have to worry about it etc. They often keep their head down and go with the flow because, in this case, they think its the right thing to do. This means also that all the usual Yes Minister type excuses to derail things will work with this group, there are legal problems and funding problems to do this or that right thing while instead there is such and such a necessity to do the wrong thing, and this group will usually buy these excuses easily, being easily led.
So anyway thats the way to look at the various groups and the significance of looking at this division is that it explains why the overall policy in a given field might be consciously corrupt even though most people involved in pushing that line might not be corrupt at all. If you think about that large group in the middle you will realise how much that group tends to follow the line of their superiors, which usually are in the 5% group, so hence they will be pushing a line that is not their own as it were. Take these three professions as an example:
i) Bankers. The vast majority of them are perfectly honest people, in my opinion, they are just involved in borrowing money in the international money markets and lending out that money to you for a little more in interest than they borrow it for. There is no obvious conspiracy involved in what they do, as such. But notice that the money markets they borrow on are in practice dominated by the Federal Reserve in the US and now the ECB in Europe. While most of them just borrow the money and think little about it but nonetheless they are just trickling down to you an economic climate set by those two aforementioned bodies and in fact if you trouble to examine the history and practices of the likes of the Federal Reserve you will be amazed at the corruption and secrecy involved there. So thats an example of this, the overall structure is corrupt, is in fact a conspiracy, but most people involved are certainly not conscious of it.
ii) TDs. In theory they are out there drawing up an informed opinion on the various issues at party conferences and in open debates in the Dail etc etc. Actually the vast majority of TDs are pumping out a line that is given to them by party bosses without any debate whatsoever in the case of the majority of parties now on all the major issues. So the TDs may be perfectly honest people but they are just robots for what I would say is the more corrupt group that are centered around the leadership of the political parties.
iii) Journalists. If we take for a minute a subset of journalists, those that report justice and policing matters, you can see another example of this I think. So you read an account of that car crash in Limerick mentioned above, as an example, which may have been reported on by perfectly honest journalists. They may be honest but you will find that nowadays in Ireland the vast vast majority of that type of reporting across all media, TV, Radio and print, will just be a rehash of a statement issued - or email sent - by the Garda Press Office or the Department of Justice. In fact to a large extent Irish journalists are now forbidden from finding out facts any other way, for example Gardai can be prosecuted now if they talk to journalists about these things except under the aegis of the Garda Press Office. So they can be perfectly honest people but they are just robots for what the Irish state want them to say, and in fact some of the facts released by those two bodies can be a complete pack of lies.
Some time ago an aggrieved Irishman camped outside Leinster House on hunger strike, Peter Preston, and for, I think, about three months all the journalists walked passed him, or greeted him, on their way to Leinster House and never printed a single word of his case in any of their newspapers. Then Michael McDowell, or somebody inside the Department of Justice, released a completely, deliberately, false account of what his complaint was. The next day the story was carried in I think three separate newspapers - with three separate newspaper owners - all of them reporting the fairy tale account from the Department of Justice and none of them reporting the honest story which every Irish journalist going into Leinster House knew perfectly well, because they were all on first name terms with Peter Preston and talked over the case with him many times. In otherwords you think at first that journalists are some kind of independent group but then you realise that on justice issues, at any rate, they are just an arm of state. Which again is another example of how journalists can be used as part of a 'conspiracy' even if they themselves are not personally corrupt or very interested in 'conspiracies'.
In any case hopefully that addresses the point you were making about journalists being an easy going sort and hence not pushing any kind of conspiracy.
vanla sighs
"Media deliberately highlighting trivial issues to distract people?
It's true to a large extent. Just yesterday The Indo had some really mundane stories leading on their homepage and further down hidden away were stories which should have been leading, laziness, bad journalism or done on purpose, on purpose would be my guess. If you take The Irish Times, often there are well deserving topical stories especially related to austerity, the EU etc which they don't even touch. The "mainstream" media has more or less been bought off I think, you'll get the odd piece that goes against the grain but by in large I think if someone did a dedicated analysis (which I'm not going to do, lol) I think you'd very quickly find the bias in the industry and it is rightwing and elitist and determined to ensure the wool is pulled over peoples eyes as much as possible."
A few days ago the Irish Independent, obviously Ireland's biggest daily newspaper, had the first five pages devoted to the unfortunate collapse of D J Carey. The sixth page was of some footballers that own a horse. There was a not a single line of news about any other issue in the first six pages of the paper!
human 19
"Regardless of your initial example of how someone hacked into some priest's house, then hacked into a drawer and removed a USB stick and inserted it into the computer and then hacked into his computer, and downloaded porn onto said previously pious USB stick...
I wouldn't say it has to be that complicated, probably various groups in the parish use the computers including the parish council and maybe a youth club etc.
Kevin Ryan
"Get with the plan, people.
Section 4.2.1 of "A Blueprint for Ireland's Recovery" (March 2011) makes clear the need for "balanced coverage" and "good news stories" in the national media.
"There needs to be a positive engagement with editorial and ownership/senior management of media
organisations in order to ensure we have balanced coverage and that good news stories are covered"
Establishment Ireland has spoken. And they know what's best for you, even if it can be hard to keep an eye on your compliance from [insert tax exile here]."
Very interesting, that Ireland First group which drew up the report consists of this rogue's gallery: Angela Kerins of Rehab, Philip Lynch (businessman), Michael Berkery (former chief executive of the Irish Farmers’ Association), John Bruton, Leslie Buckley (associate of Denis O'Brien), Pat Cox, Dermot Desmond, Frank Flannery (of FG), Ray MacSharry, Denis O’Brien, Seán O’Driscoll (Glen Dimplex), Michael O’Flynn (developer), Mike Soden (Bank of Ireland), Michael Somers, Dick Spring, Peter Sutherland, Brendan Tuohy (ex civil service sec gen). They are all very associated too with getting the EU treaties past I'd say e.g. the IFA was very prominent in that the last time.
Analyzer
"A news supplement to a property paper had two "economists" talking up the borrowing binge in the entire binge era. Some of the commentary was utterly disgraceful, and inaccurate.
And yet a large proportion of the population believed it, completely. In fact they let it influence their purchasing - in effect making the rich extremely rich, and mortgaging themselves into poverty for their entire working lives."
Yep, letting the media dictate to you their agenda is a very big mistake in modern times and unfortunately modern academia is almost as bad, huge herd instinct there to.
Telemachus
"I heard on tnsradio the cop had no licence or tax and only got an 800 euro fine for the incident that lead to him killing two people.
Saw nothing about this in the mainstream media before this."
Greenjerseyman
"I'll tell you one thing for certain. If you or I knocked down and Killed 2 people while driving without a licence, no tax and bald tyres, we would receive a lot more punishment than a 900 euro fine!"
True enough but for me its the other parts of the story that are the most interesting.
For the sake of argument imagine you were a satanic film director who was doing a snuff film trying to kill two guys on a motorway like this. Presumably you would drug the two guys and lay them out on the motorway and along comes the car and rolls over them and what happens? Probably at best you will have the car hitting and crushing the lungs of one of the guys and going over the legs of the other, you would hardly get both killed instantly, as was reported in this case. Remember this is only a saloon car hitting the two guys not some 8 wheeled articulated truck. Probably you would have to do the shoot again and measure the distance between the guys laid on the road to make sure that they exactly matched the distance between the front wheels of the car and then get the car coming along to exactly hit them so that each wheel went over one of the guys, or something like that.
The whole thing just seems so convolutedly unlikely...
Des Quirell
"Yet all of the counter-examples you provided *were* reported in the media.
Sometimes the media has to back off after reporting something because it is now the subject of judicial action"
I think thats a bit like Yes Minister, they throw in the legal excuse along with all the other excuses to do nothing. As nephin described, there is no shortage of media examples where they put the boot in when it suits them irrespective of any legal or privacy difficulties.
sondagefaux
"The Irish News circulates pretty much only in Northern Ireland.
...
And since when has the Herald been anything but a source of trivia?"
Well the Herald is supposed to be Ireland's leading Evening newspaper and the Irish News does circulate quite a bit in the South now.
Casillas
"Your examples aren't the best but I see what your getting at."
I think its not too bad though when I just restricted myself to the main headlines over two days of news.
cricket
"There is an issue about media ownership/ control in this country, but the OP here doesn't address it."
True thats a big issue alright but I think a bigger one is the question of state control of the news sources. I mean the vast vast majority of news stories related to justice issues originate with press releases from the Department of Justice and/or the Garda Press Office (as I waffle on about below) and if they had to name this source, during a radio news bulletin for example, then I think you would rapidly begin to realise just how Orwellian Ireland actually is right now!
Lonewolfe
"I hear ya barking there big dog but in my opinion (and experience) many media professionals take the path of least resistance - few are courageous and many are lazy.
I don't buy the conspiracy theory.
Despite O'Brien's monopoly, journalists have no steak in a "distracted" public. News is for sale - whatever makes it most appealing is the general rule of thumb."
Well thats an interesting point and I thought I might waffle on about that overall question. I think that most people in the media are not consciously involved in any 'conspiracy' but I think nonetheless the overall direction of the Irish media is indeed dominated by a deliberate line which is part of an overall 'conspiracy' in my opinion. So how do I square that circle is the question I guess. Well I think this is true of many fields and I call it:
The 5, 94, and 1% theory of modern day corruption.
In my opinion, for what its worth, I think you can divide the people involved in any politically important modern day profession into three sections of 5% at the top, the vast bulk of the rest at 94% and a few others in the 1% category.
5%
I think if you dig deep you will find about 5% of the practitioners in any particular field - e.g. members of the Dail, senior gardai and others in the security apparatus, and journalists - are these days consciously corrupt i.e. that they are cooperating with foreign intelligence agencies or Occult groups etc. I think this is very definitely true of Ireland despite what some might naievly think, but notice its only 5%, I am not saying that the bulk of Irish TDs or journalists are on the payroll of intelligences agencies or whatever. But I think these are the most influential 5% of journalists, and TDs etc, hence the real power bases in the various newspapers, e.g. the Harrises in the case of the Sunday Independent and earlier in RTE, who may or may not be the actual editors, and the party leaders in the Dail, certainly Kenny, Martin, Mary Lou MacDonald, Gilmore etc, are consciously corrupt in my opinion and are working to a 'conspiratorial agenda'.
1%
Then on the opposite side of the fence to them you have about 1% of politicians and journalists etc who are out there scrapping to really unearth corruption and do the right thing at all times. Notice I put this figure very small and yet a lot of people think that most journalists, for example, are like that, courageous investigative reporters anxious to unearth all wrongdoing etc etc. But its not like this at all, the vast vast majority of TDs and journalists, and what have you, will not do anything in modern times to jeopardise their careers by going up against the real power brokers out there, except a few stray honest people that do their level best, like in my opinion the three former MEPs, Patricia McKenna, Kathy Sinnott and in England Ashley Mote. Notice too from that list how much the good guys are artificially divided among themselves across the various isms that are out there, exaggerated political divisions that give us a type of divide and conquer effect.
94%
So the vast bulk of any group is this 94%, somewhere in the middle between the guys who are openly corrupt and cooperating with what they perceive to be the dominant power and the guys at the other end who are standing up at all times for the ordinary people.
I would divide this group also into about two equal sections. I would say one section (A) is softly corrupt as it were i.e. they would be the type of people who would have heard a few disquieting stories but they keep their head down and cooperate with their party in the hope of being appointed ministers, in the case of TDs, or otherwise receive some largesse for their cooperation and silence. In otherwords they are not taking brown envelopes but they are conscious something is wrong and are nonetheless quite content to go with the flow for their own personal legal, but corrupt, aggrandisement.
Then the other section (B) of any modern group will on the otherhand normally do the right thing as they perceive it, in otherwords they are not the kind of people who get up in the morning trying to feather their own nest as such, they might in fact have put in a lot of honest work, as TDs say, for the good of others. But a big problem with this group is often their naivety and also they might not be well educated about political corruption, dismissing all talk of intelligence agencies as 'conspiracy stuff' etc, they haven't heard about that evil in the media so it doesn't really exist and hence they don't have to worry about it etc. They often keep their head down and go with the flow because, in this case, they think its the right thing to do. This means also that all the usual Yes Minister type excuses to derail things will work with this group, there are legal problems and funding problems to do this or that right thing while instead there is such and such a necessity to do the wrong thing, and this group will usually buy these excuses easily, being easily led.
So anyway thats the way to look at the various groups and the significance of looking at this division is that it explains why the overall policy in a given field might be consciously corrupt even though most people involved in pushing that line might not be corrupt at all. If you think about that large group in the middle you will realise how much that group tends to follow the line of their superiors, which usually are in the 5% group, so hence they will be pushing a line that is not their own as it were. Take these three professions as an example:
i) Bankers. The vast majority of them are perfectly honest people, in my opinion, they are just involved in borrowing money in the international money markets and lending out that money to you for a little more in interest than they borrow it for. There is no obvious conspiracy involved in what they do, as such. But notice that the money markets they borrow on are in practice dominated by the Federal Reserve in the US and now the ECB in Europe. While most of them just borrow the money and think little about it but nonetheless they are just trickling down to you an economic climate set by those two aforementioned bodies and in fact if you trouble to examine the history and practices of the likes of the Federal Reserve you will be amazed at the corruption and secrecy involved there. So thats an example of this, the overall structure is corrupt, is in fact a conspiracy, but most people involved are certainly not conscious of it.
ii) TDs. In theory they are out there drawing up an informed opinion on the various issues at party conferences and in open debates in the Dail etc etc. Actually the vast majority of TDs are pumping out a line that is given to them by party bosses without any debate whatsoever in the case of the majority of parties now on all the major issues. So the TDs may be perfectly honest people but they are just robots for what I would say is the more corrupt group that are centered around the leadership of the political parties.
iii) Journalists. If we take for a minute a subset of journalists, those that report justice and policing matters, you can see another example of this I think. So you read an account of that car crash in Limerick mentioned above, as an example, which may have been reported on by perfectly honest journalists. They may be honest but you will find that nowadays in Ireland the vast vast majority of that type of reporting across all media, TV, Radio and print, will just be a rehash of a statement issued - or email sent - by the Garda Press Office or the Department of Justice. In fact to a large extent Irish journalists are now forbidden from finding out facts any other way, for example Gardai can be prosecuted now if they talk to journalists about these things except under the aegis of the Garda Press Office. So they can be perfectly honest people but they are just robots for what the Irish state want them to say, and in fact some of the facts released by those two bodies can be a complete pack of lies.
Some time ago an aggrieved Irishman camped outside Leinster House on hunger strike, Peter Preston, and for, I think, about three months all the journalists walked passed him, or greeted him, on their way to Leinster House and never printed a single word of his case in any of their newspapers. Then Michael McDowell, or somebody inside the Department of Justice, released a completely, deliberately, false account of what his complaint was. The next day the story was carried in I think three separate newspapers - with three separate newspaper owners - all of them reporting the fairy tale account from the Department of Justice and none of them reporting the honest story which every Irish journalist going into Leinster House knew perfectly well, because they were all on first name terms with Peter Preston and talked over the case with him many times. In otherwords you think at first that journalists are some kind of independent group but then you realise that on justice issues, at any rate, they are just an arm of state. Which again is another example of how journalists can be used as part of a 'conspiracy' even if they themselves are not personally corrupt or very interested in 'conspiracies'.
In any case hopefully that addresses the point you were making about journalists being an easy going sort and hence not pushing any kind of conspiracy.