MEDIA ANALYSES: Late Late Show “insufferable arseholes” incident

(UPDATE BELOW) “You're a censor… how dare you” an uninvited guess told Late Late presenter Pat Kenny last night. With a few mutters from Kenny, the man continued, “Gay Byrne and you are [mutters] insufferable arseholes”.

“You arsehole” the man says – “thank you very much” Kenny replied – and just as the visually kicked in the man ended saying “you piece of shit”.

Irish tabloids led with the story on Saturday morning, but to quote tcal.net, a boards.ie discussion on  the Late Late Show intruder "appeared within *seconds*".

Just about a half hour after the incident, a boards.ie user posted a downloadable video clip that was then reposted on YouTube within an hour.

After lunchtime on Saturday at least five copies of the clip was on YouTube, with over 2500 views.

On Sunday after just before 4pm the five copies of the clip had mounted nearly 27,000 views, there was also a second longer version of the clip with over 3000 views. Another spike is likely on Monday as links to the clip are emailed around offices.

Blogs such as Tcal.net, and blogorrah.com, and tabloids including the Irish Star, and the Sun were able reasonably accurately quoting the man. This task proved too hard for RTE News, Thomas Crosbie Media, the Press Association (on UTVlive.com), the Irish Independent, and the Irish Times.

The quotes used by the Irish Independent, and the Irish Times - "You and Gay Byrne are insufferable. You're a piece of s***" and "You and Gay Byrne are insufferable. You're a piece of s***" - are nearly identical. Talk about newsroom culture.

Both are wrong, the man clearly says, “Gay Byrne and you are insufferable arseholes”

As for the blocking of the word ‘shit’ in the line “You're a piece of s***", we think most people would agree with the Guardian that “s***” and “s**t” are both copouts.

And unlike blogs newspaper’s online breaking news sections didn’t embed the YouTube clip into their pages, nor did they use a pop-up window as the LA Times website did when a UCLA student was recently Tasered for not showing their ID card in a library and refusing to leave.

UPDATE: An article in the Irish Mail on Sunday reported that the Late Late Show intruder’s reference to “You're a censor” is connected with the show ignoring him about a ‘black box’ type device for cars he has designed to tackle the problem of road deaths in Ireland.

The Mail also reported that the man’s daughter is a researcher on the show, but he says she had no knowledge of his stunt, nor did she get him into the audience. The man claims he just told security at Montrose that he was in the audience and was allowed to enter.

Comments

[stiofain]

Great post.

[John]

Yer man was interviewed on TodayFM on Monday with Ray D'Arcy, anyone got the audio from the interview.

I tuned in when the interview was over, something about yer man was drunk, and had invented a road safty gadget which Gaybo and Pat the plank ignored, hence... the bit about you and Gay are arseholes..

[paul stokes]

censors is still right