Newspaper viewed blackened out sections by holding documents up to a light source
Last week the Irish Times ran a story on the planned rail projects for Dublin, the story was based on Freedom of Information request made nearly two years ago.
While the request was filed a day after the transport plan 'Transport 21' was launched the Irish Times only received some of the documents the week before last, the newspaper says that every figure, particularly cost estimates, were blacked out.
The Mahon Tribunal’s action against the Irish Times has been
set to be heard before the High Court on July 10.
The action centres around forcing the editor Geraldine
Kennedy and public affairs correspondent Colm Keena to reveal the source of a
story focused on payments to the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, a letter quoted in the
article is viewed by the private and confidential.
The Irish political party Sinn Féin has blacklisted at least two newspapers in Ireland, according to claims made in the Sunday Tribune and the Irish edition of the Sunday Times yesterday.
Both newspapers say Sinn Féin are denying them access to candidates in the upcoming Northern Ireland Assembly elections, and referred to each other. The action
is understood to be due to the two paper’s unfavourable reporting and comment
of the party.
The blacklisting news appeared as a note in the Sunday Tribune alongside an article on the Assembly elections by the paper’s Northern Editor, Suzanne Breen. While in the Sunday Times (Irish edition) the pseudonym column ‘Sue Denham’ complained about the party’s move.
The Tribune notes, “Sinn Féin's viewpoint is absent from this article because it was the only party which refused access to the Sunday Tribune. It said it would not make candidates in any constituency available for interview and it would not cooperate with the newspaper during the entire election campaign. It's an ironic position for a party which, for decades, complained of media bans and censorship. Sinn Féin is also refusing to cooperate with the Sunday Times”.
Two separate issues... On Saddam's execution, YouTube, and the old media acting as the arbiter, Roy
Greenslade asks...
Should people be restricted from
seeing anything they want? If so, who should act as the arbiter? Do we have a
democratic right to decide these matters as individuals? Does the apparent
hunger in the West to view the images of Saddam indicate that
taste has been incorrectly imposed in the past by mainstream media?” .
Here’s what my Internet-fearing editors have failed to understand: I
don’t want to talk to you; I want to talk at you. A column is not my
attempt to engage in a conversation with you. I have more than enough
people to converse with. And I don’t listen to them either. That sound
on the phone, Mom, is me typing.
Some newspapers even list the
phone numbers of their reporters at the end of their articles. That’s a
smart use of their employees’ time. Why not just save a step and have
them set up a folding table at a senior citizen center with a sign
asking for complaints?
(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 Sundayreported 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.
In his column today, Fay states “The RSF’s glowing assessment of Irish press freedom comes as an editor and a journalist, Geraldine Kennedy and Colm Keena of The Irish Times, face criminal sanctions for publishing revelations about secret payments by businessmen to a serving finance minister”.
Citing libel laws, he rubbishes the idea of free speech in Ireland “These are routinely used by the rich and infamous to stymie media comment and inquiry”.
Fay also points out that the purposed reform of the libel laws comes with “even more restrictive” privacy laws. And that media attempts to probe “the darker recesses of public life” are faced with “court injunctions and threats of lawsuits”.
Ireland has topped a Reporters Without Borders Worldwide ranking for press freedoms...
Ireland joint top in global press freedom league Ireland is among four countries rated first in an annual survey of press freedoms for the fourth consecutive year.
The fifth annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index also found a "steady erosion of press freedom" in France, the United States and Japan.(from the Irish Times, free vie eircom.net)
But how long will it last there with the proposed defamation and privacy bills?
In a joint letter to the Irish government the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum said that the bills if enacted would...
inhibit the way newspapers carry out their legitimate and important function in society
According to them the bills pave the for the destruction of many press freedoms in Ireland.
Google has apparently removed a search listing pointing to a blogger’s complaint that the Thinkhouse PR were “repeatedly” spamming him.
In their ‘Media and Marketing’ section, the Sunday Tribune yesterday published a story on the Dublin-based Thinkhouse PR moving into an office in “virtual Dublin” in the online computer game Second Life; but good press doesn’t last if you spam the wrong person.
Damien Mulley author of Irish blog mulley.net, and chairman of the voluntary pressure group IrelandOffline, was sent unsolicited email multiple times, even after a number of removal requests.
Mulley originally posted an open letter to the Data Protection Commissioner on August 23, but controversy only arose today after he realised his post has apparently being black listed from a Google search index of ‘Thinkhouse PR’.
According to Mulley his first post had taken third position on the ‘Thinkhouse PR’ search, a post linking to his from Irish blog tomrafteryit.net has since taken the position.
The creation of a new criminal offence and a statutory Irish
press council proposed with the defamation and privacy bills has been criticised by the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
This is the statutory Irish press council included in the proposed defamation
bill that - to quote irishlegalaffairs.blogspot.com - has “been welcomed with open
arms by a grateful media”.
Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media,
said...
It is worrying that the draft introduces a new crime, namely 'publication
of gravely harmful statements', and would even introduce the possibility of a
summary conviction for that offence in so-called minor cases...
The fact
that prison sentences are envisaged for the new offences clearly contradicts
the guidance of the European Court of Human Rights which has never approved
imprisonment sentences for defamation.
A comment posted by “similarly” on Roy
Greenslade’s blog makes an interesting note “Criminal defamation? This
will make Ireland like Turkey or Nigeria,
Indonesia or...
Do the Irish want to live under this potentially totalitarian threat?”. Indeed,
the OSCE notes “Courts in Western Europe do not apply
such provisions anymore”.
Keeping to our usual theme that the media hides important stories under the carpet; the Phoenix this week states that the treatment Independent News and Media handed out to journalists Gerry Flynn and Justine McCarthy has been underreported.
The Phoenix highlights itself and the Village as having taken an interest, then goes on to accuse the Village of an “imbalance” on the story. The magazine makes out that Village editor Vincent Browne was, at the time of their first article, trying to recruite McCarthy. Then implies there hasn’t been any coverage since because “Browne has now got what wanted – McCarthy’s employment at his magazine”. The ‘Fit to print?’ column is also somewhat obsessed with the news of Village’s financial troubles.
There is - of course - no possibility that any Phoenix coverage of Village could be seen as having any “imbalance”. While it could be misguided to switch one magazine for the other, the Village is a grownup version of the Phoenix. They may not be in direct competition, but they’re not worlds apart - at least some of their readership overlap.
Sunday Times columnist, Liam Fay, 
Keeping to our usual theme that the media hides important stories under the carpet; 
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