I thought it would be worthwhile drawing attention to a blog entry relating to the recent student protests in the UK by a senior journalist in a mainstream news outlet in order to highlight prevailing media attitudes towards protest and, in particular, civil disobedience. It’s important to make a distinction here, as the right to [...]

Reporting Palestine and the Mavi Marmara
One of the most interesting features of mainstream reporting on Israel and Palestine is the disparity between the way violent attacks by each side are presented. Israel’s actions are chiefly explained in terms of its right to “self defence“, while those carried out by Palestinians are more often than not [...]

The arrival of Matthew Elderfield a.k.a. The Financial Regulator a.k.a. The Regulator a.k.a. The Sheriff of Dodge City has been universally heralded by the media and political establishment as the second coming of Christ. Well, the Christ of ledgers, calculators and informal speeches at the Financial Services Ireland Conference anyway.
At a time when public sector workers and government are almost [...]

An interview with John Gibbons, formerly of the Irish Times
John Gibbons has covered the issue of climate change for the Irish Times for the past two years. Several weeks ago his weekly column abruptly came to an end. In his final piece Gibbons took the mainstream media to task over their climate coverage:
“Ireland’s most senior [...]

[The ruling class has constructed] two parallel universes, one in which there seems to be an endless amount of money that can be put into the banking system and another where we have to attack the blind, the disabled, children and the unemployed. It’s remarkable how successful this crude strategy of distracting and dividing people [...]

The furore over Mahmoud Ahmajinedad’s apparent success in last months Iranian presidential elections tells us a few important things about how the dominant media feels democratic deficiencies, alleged or otherwise, should be reported.
According to the Irish Times Iran’s “suffocating theocracy”1 sustained a crisis of legitimacy “after it lost the trust of millions of Iranians”2 following [...]

“This debate will go on and on. It’s been an interesting discussion and hopefully we’ll come back to it again.” [Miriam O'Callaghan, RTE's Prime Time, 25th November 2008]
Miriam O’Callaghan concluding a recent Prime Time segment ‘Questions raised over global warming’, making the surprising claim that there exists a ‘debate’ over the science of climate change. [...]