journalism – Page 3 – Slugger O'Toole

“Roy is right to say there are journalists working for party political advantage”

Mick Fealty on November 4, 2014, 1:53 pm

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Roy Greenslade has another post up on the subject of Mairia Cahill case. [Ahem, with the comments closed. Whose decision was that I wonder? Ed]. He cites a letter writer in today’s Irish Times EE Fanning (also a prolific and unremittingly pro Sinn Fein twitter writer): “Only journalists outside of Ireland have questioned the treatment being meted out to Gerry Adams… The gated community of journalism in Ireland has little time for fairness when it comes to Sinn Féin.” That’s a …

Calumnies sting without disabling; and those stung are moved by hatred of their detractors

Mick Fealty on October 28, 2014, 4:39 pm

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“Oh, yes–you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me.” Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People It’s taken two weeks for a mainstream journalist to commit to print some kind of defence of Sinn Fein and raise questions about Mairia Cahill’s credibility. Roy Greenslade has interesting views on the matter, not least because he breaks the news that… …the programme itself is now under fire. It is claimed that the makers failed to take account of the …

Whilst ‘No’ channels Æthelred, is ‘Yes’ filibustering the media up till polling day?

Mick Fealty on September 16, 2014, 12:13 pm

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Well, only two days to go. Mike Smithson wisely is throwing the polls off to one side: My reading is that Thursday could produce a YES victory or a NO win by up to a 10% lead. Hedging my bets? You bet. Yep. It could be squeaking it, and it might not. We don’t feckin know. We do know that the Yes campaign however has been an outstanding success having wrought from Westminster all manner of time sensitive promises for …

“The job of a journalist is not to cheerlead, but to ask hard questions…”

Pete Baker on September 11, 2014, 2:04 pm

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In the Irish Times, Karlin Lillington makes a pertinent point on coverage of Apple’s recent launch of “two phones, a payment system and a watch” – “a non-existent product that, for now, remains vapourware”. From the Irish Times The idea of an audience of journalists and analysts giving a standing ovation at a product launch is, frankly, alarming. The job of a journalist is not to cheerlead, but to ask hard questions. To be sceptical at product launches. To confirm …

News Letter accuses Sinn Fein of trying to pull an ATN on them…

Mick Fealty on September 3, 2014, 4:55 pm

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Here’s a funny one (in both senses of the word). Aldous Huxley wrote back in 1958 that… …the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the …

“all of this demagogic simplification leads to a cynical view of politics…”

Mick Fealty on May 29, 2014, 12:57 am

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I’ve just watched the public shaming of Father Pastor Jack McConnell on Nolan this evening. Actually, that’s not meant to be funny. I sometimes wonder where seriousness ends and pompous solemnity begins… I spotted this quote on Paul Evans’ Facebook page a few days before this story broke, but it seems pretty well met to the occasion that’s in it from Pierre Bourdieu’s 1996 classic, ‘On Television‘… …the journalistic field produces and imposes on the public a very particular vision …

Come on BBC NI give us the bad news on our beaches…?

Mick Fealty on April 15, 2014, 9:37 am

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So, here’s what the listeners to Radio 4 got this morning on the new Good Beach guide report, picking out Northern Ireland as a noteable weak point in the overall UK figures… .@mickfealty – @BBCr4today puts NI beach water quality stats in context wholly, sadly missing from @BBCNewsNI report pic.twitter.com/cW7nCFcSMR — Patrick Corrigan (@PatrickCorrigan) April 15, 2014 Then this from BBC NI… Northern Ireland beaches’ water quality ‘acceptable’… Clearly good news elsewhere has meant lots of detail on a general …

Phil Mac Giolla Bhain showing what ‘socially present journalism’ looks like…

Mick Fealty on April 9, 2014, 5:33 pm

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“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations So a little vicarious glory via sometimes Slugger blogger Phil Mac Giolla Bhain who has made it to number 10 in the Press Gazette’s top social journalists (not bad for a Glasgow Irishman ensconced in the west Donegal Gaeltacht…) It’s all his own doing of course. The key is to maintain social presence. Phil’s success has been …

Pilot offers a ‘smoke in the cabin” scenario for #MH370 on G+….

Mick Fealty on March 18, 2014, 8:31 am

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Okay, here’s a quick slightly off beat post for us. It comes from the Google Plus page of Chris Goodfellow, who apparently (I’ve not had time to verify) is a professional pilot based in Florida. I picked it up late last night from a retweet from Lorcan Roche Kelly who in turn had retweeted Jon Ronson. In it Goodfellow lays out a very scenario for the disappearance of flight MH370 from Kuala to Bejing that seems to answer most if not …

New journalism: The odd or the offbeat is often where the important news is buried these days.

Mick Fealty on March 14, 2014, 9:13 am

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As it happens, I’m on my way to the Reuters Institute at Oxford to join a small round table workshop on the Future of Journalistic Work, with the general idea of helping the Institute to “scope issues related to the shifts emerging in journalistic work and employment”. And as it also happens, Lyra McKee has blogged this morning on her own crowdsourced attempt to do some depth journalism on the story of the Reverend Robert Bradford in the last few …

In journalism “claims towards neutrality and impartiality and objectivity are bogus.”

Mick Fealty on March 10, 2014, 10:30 am

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I’ve only met Roy Greenslade once. Ironically it was in the British embassy in Paris for a round table (PDF) on the future of UK and French journalism. He’s every bit as intelligent and convivial as he comes across in his blog. This week he was in the news, rather than just commenting on it when it was learned that he stood bail for John Downey. Interestingly he shares his thoughts on politics and journalism with the Irish Post: “I …

“a party that does not understand for what it is fighting has no right to win…”

Mick Fealty on December 19, 2013, 4:09 pm

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Ever since spending nine hours in the basement of Belfast central Library scouring the pages of the News Letter over the Famine periood, I’ve been a big fan of the direct style of Victorian journalism. This extract is from page 9 of The Spectator magazine in August 1891: We suppose it is not, on the whole, disadvantageous for each party to have its turn in Opposition and in Office, in the responsibilities of criticism and in the responsibilities of administration. …

Peter Robinson, keeping the press accountable – Caption Competition

Brian Spencer on November 26, 2013, 10:38 am

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Never mind the “unpleasant odour” rising from Northern Ireland’s libel law (and the urge to censor), there’s something a little stinky coming from Peter Robinson’s call for the media to show more support for Stormont. As Orwell said, “journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” Surely we don’t need more photos of politicians standing around with cheesy grins, Stormont’s main output? I look forward to seeing your captions for the empty speech …

[Soapbox] Shinners, please don’t blame the messenger!

Soapbox on October 15, 2013, 8:10 am

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Gerry Adams is a liar. There. I’ve said it. Cue the wolf circling the sheep and herding them all in. He’s never been in the IRA. (yeah, right) He was in jail when ‘Always look on the Bright Side Of Life’ was written (not true). He is reported to have told the family of Jean Mc Conville that he was also in jail at that time (he wasn’t). Lies have a habit of tripping you up. Not so, if you’re …

Gerry Adams on David Frost who came at his guests “as if it were a summer’s day…”

Mick Fealty on September 2, 2013, 5:30 pm

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Gerry Adams has taken a little time out on the occasion of the passing of David Frost to share his further thoughts on what constitutes good journalism… I was interviewed by David many times. He was always courteous, good humoured, well researched and keenly interested in Ireland and the peace process. There was always a depth to his interviews that is frequently missing in others. David’s style of interview was unique and effective. He once explained to me that there …

The collapsing broad middle and the rise of the disruptive troll as undocumented feature

Mick Fealty on August 9, 2013, 10:10 am

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“For you, in my respect, are all the world; Then how can it be said I am alone, When all the world is here to look on me?” – ACT II SCENE I, Midsummer Night’s Dream So, trolling? First, it’s not about a single typography called bloggers, yet it is about blogging (however you care to define that, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc). As the old timer techies used to say, “it’s not a bug; it’s an undocumented feature!” A couple …

“As usual, few things are as unreliable as Obama’s speeches and rhetoric…”

Pete Baker on May 30, 2013, 6:52 pm

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At the Big G’s Comment is Free, Glenn Greenwald follows up on his excellent analysis of US President Barack Obama’s recent ‘war on terror’ speech to focus in on one of those domestic political problems I mentioned – “the serious threat posed by the Obama administration to press freedoms”. From Glenn Greenwald’s post Outside of the most hardened Obama media loyalists, it’s virtually impossible to find any defenses or even offers of excuses or mitigation for what the Obama administration has been doing …

When all your readers are rapidly becoming self directed autodidacts?

Mick Fealty on January 16, 2013, 4:50 pm

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From stone slate to silicon tablet and the importance of getting over a widespread platonic fear of making your ‘digital mark’ so happens that the generational progression in my family means that whilst my granddad started school in March 1879 in the first state school in his rural district, my youngest has yet to start his formal education. So there’s 130 years between my son and my granddad’s first days at school. This is not as exceptional as you might think. …

“On newspaper opinion pages, including this one, a shrill keening sound can be heard…”

Mick Fealty on January 10, 2013, 1:06 pm

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Today Hugh Linehan in the Irish Times today channels the commonplace American role of reader’s editor, taking on two of the papers most respected columnists, John Waters and Davy Adams. I think this goes in the lesson boxed marked write about you know (don’t write about what you don’t): On chat show panels and newspaper opinion pages, including this one, a shrill keening sound can be heard. The sky is falling on our heads. Newfangled fads with absurd names are …

National Newspapers of Ireland deploy the survival instincts of the Dodo…

Mick Fealty on January 4, 2013, 10:11 am

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So it’s Friday. On Sunday Simon McGarr wrote a fascinating piece in which he revealed that some of his professional clients were under pressure from Newspaper Licensing Ireland Ltd (NLI), a collection agent for the Newspaper publishers to pay for linking in to a number of newspaper articles about them. The piece went viral, and not just in Ireland. Some of the leading advocates for the Internet in the US went for it in a big big way, muttering darkly about …