Media – Page 16 – Slugger O'Toole

There Is No Alternative! (to Casement Park development plan)

Pete Baker on September 29, 2014, 11:13 pm

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A fairly desperate argument from lawyers for the Northern Ireland Planning Service in Belfast High Court today, during the judicial review of the planned £70million redevelopment of Casement Park in west Belfast. As the BBC reports The judge heard that DCAL have contributed £62.5m of the £77m cost of rebuilding the stadium as part of a project involving the development of Windsor Park football stadium and Ravenhill rugby ground. A Planning Service lawyer said that if the funds are not spent in time, …

Labour Party: “Making no progress on welfare has financial implications. It is not a cost-free choice…”

Pete Baker on September 25, 2014, 2:31 pm

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As Mick mentioned, the repeated attempts to blame the fallout from the Northern Ireland Executive’s deadlock on Welfare Reform on “the right wing Tory/DUP austerity agenda“, or “the British Tory Government“, or, more frequently, “a cabinet of Tory millionaires“, have been dealt a blow by clarification of the Labour Party’s position by the Shadow NI Secretary of State at the party’s conference. From the Irish Times report (23 Sept) The disagreement, said [Labour’s shadow Northern Ireland secretary Ivan Lewis], is “a denial” …

“to protect the Policing Board’s integrity…”

Pete Baker on September 17, 2014, 5:20 pm

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In the absence of any further explanation from Sinn Féin for Caitríona Ruane’s dramatic flouncing off the NI Policing Board selection panel to recruit a new PSNI Deputy Chief Constable on Monday, her party colleague on the Board, Gerry Kelly, MLA, has attempted to defend her actions. “If the process is wrong and particularly if the belief [is] that it is compromised, then there is a duty on that person to raise that and that’s what Caitríona Ruane did and I stand by …

Sinn Féin: “In light of the need for absolute transparency in all public appointments and to protect the Policing Board’s integrity…”

Pete Baker on September 15, 2014, 8:25 pm

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Earlier today the Sinn Féin MLA, and member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Caitríona Ruane, suddenly announced that she was unilaterally withdrawing from the panel to recruit a new PSNI Deputy Chief Constable – claiming that she “[believed] that the process may have been compromised”. Here’s the statement from Sinn Féin Sinn Féin MLA and Policing Board member Caitríona Ruane has withdrawn from the panel to recruit a new PSNI deputy chief constable and called for a fresh recruitment process. The Policing Board member said; “I …

#IndyRef: In a battle for a nation’s hearts and minds it has to be both…

Mick Fealty on September 12, 2014, 7:55 am

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Now, this is interesting. It’s a fairly aggressive question from the BBC’s Nick Robinson on “why a Scottish voter should believe you, a politician, against men who are responsible for billions of pounds profit?”… Not his greatest moment implying as it does an ad hominen appeal to absent and unaccountable authority (a classic of the cave) rather than a question with its own internal logic. What follows is a long hectoring lecture from the Scottish First Minister on Number 10’s …

“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 …

Lord Chief Justice Morgan: “Our system of government depends on mutual respect between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary…”

Pete Baker on September 5, 2014, 4:02 pm

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The BBC reports that, after waiting 8 months for a reply, Northern Ireland’s most senior judge, Lord Chief Justice Declan Morgan, has made public a letter of complaint he sent to the Northern Ireland First and deputy First Ministers about comments made by a NI Executive Minister in the Assembly. From the published text of the letter in the BBC report Dear Peter and Martin RULE OF LAW Regretfully, I am writing to you about comments made by a Minister …

“Run like a huckster’s shop” – Redux

Pete Baker on July 31, 2014, 2:35 pm

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[No change since June 2009, then? – Ed] Have there been any consequences…? A BBC report that the DUP and Sinn Féin have, belatedly, agreed the outcome of the semi-detached polit-bureau Northern Ireland Executive’s June budget monitoring round was met with understandable criticism from the other NI Executive parties. Justice Minister David Ford, who leads the Alliance Party, described the situation as “shambolic” while the Ulster Unionists and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) said they had been kept in the dark about …

It is not Journalists, bloggers, Twitter or Facebook that make people smarter (or dumber)…

Mick Fealty on July 16, 2014, 10:37 am

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It’s four years since Una Mullally left blogging, just around the time the Irisgate and Liam Adams stories were breaking. Writing in the Irish Times, she makes an important observation of the online melee that is t’Internet… Empathy is one of the great battles of the internet. It is the erosion of empathy – when we’re met with screens, not faces – that sees people become cruel bullies and careless insulters. In controlling empathy, tech companies are at the precipice of wider …

“That is not a state of affairs they would expect to find in a competently run country.”

Pete Baker on July 14, 2014, 4:42 pm

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Riffing on the row over Garth Brooks’ non-concerts in Croke Park that has consumed local media attention, in the Irish Times John McManus has some pertinent points to make about the long-running saga of who controls the former Quinn Group companies – and the accompanying campaign of attacks and intimidation. In recent weeks one consortium, Quinn Business Retention Company, which includes former Quinn Group senior executives, has teamed up with Endless LLP, a UK private equity house, to become the last bidder standing sole …

Where do people get their news? BBC 1 & UTV out in front. But Sky News & Radio Ulster neck & neck!

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 2, 2014, 10:00 am

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Perhaps pertinent to my earlier post on the media, Ofcom have recently released their News Consumption in the UK report. In Northern Ireland, the top news sources are BBC One (cited as being used by 65% of adults), UTV (56%), BBC website or app (28%), Sky News Channel (20%) and BBC Radio Ulster (20%). Lots more facts, figures and charts in the set of slides that accompany the report. Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast)Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about …

Changing the conversation about the media … do you feel the hand of vested interests? #xss14

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 2, 2014, 9:00 am

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Friday morning at Xchange summer school began with a two hour session looking at how to change the conversation about the media. Denzil McDaniel was joined on the second hand sofas by former journalist and spin-doctor Lance Price, digital investigative journalist Steven McCaffery and ex-newspaper editor, columnist and commentator Nick Garbutt. It was Lance Price’s first trip back to Enniskillen since covering the 1987 bombing for the BBC. Later he worked in 10 Downing Street as deputy communications director (under …

Peter Hain: “since I was running the place I could more or less do what I wanted to do…”

Pete Baker on June 29, 2014, 5:23 pm

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The former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland [and Wales, etc! – Ed], Peter Hain, has been reminiscing about the good old days… “When I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2005-07, [Prince Charles] was delighted when I told him that since I was running the place I could more or less do what I wanted to do. “I was able to introduce a trial for complementary medicine on the NHS, and it had spectacularly good results, that …

“Now meetings seem almost routine and we have dispensed with the fig leaf…”

Pete Baker on June 24, 2014, 6:57 pm

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Like boiling a frog… After the party’s opposition to her first truly historic official visit to Ireland, this week, on the third occasion of the Northern Ireland deputy First Minister, Sinn Fein’s forgetful Martin McGuinness, being presented to the UK Head of State, Queen Elizabeth II, the earlier pretence has finally been dropped. As Liam Clarke notes in the Belfast Telegraph In another sense, the Queen and Martin McGuinness may look back on how difficult that first meeting between them had been …

Gerry Adams: “this can be too easily twisted into a view that since everyone was to blame, nobody was to blame…”

Pete Baker on June 21, 2014, 4:46 pm

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The Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, TD, has been blaming others, again, for the failure to agree a comprehensive package on, among other issues, dealing with the past – in particular, a failure to agree on the holistic approach that could be said to characterise the mechanisms contained in the Haass proposals. But he had some interesting comments to make last weekend on a specific topic from the past elsewhere – [Not here? – Ed] No, there – that could help inform further discussion. Here’s …

NI Police Ombudsman: “It’s very easy to raise allegations – I think the important thing is whether there is any evidence behind it”

Pete Baker on June 19, 2014, 4:52 pm

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Having investigated a complaint from the Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams – following newspapers reports in 2006 which alleged that members of the RUC knew of a 1984 UDA gun attack on Adams in advance, or were themselves involved – the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, Michael Maguire, has published his conclusions. Dr Maguire has said he has found no evidence that police knew of, or were involved in away way, in the attack on Mr Adams: “We have talked to all the people involved in the events …

Martin McGuinness: “I mean I remember, I remember, I remember…”

Pete Baker on June 17, 2014, 4:06 pm

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Or not, as the case may be. Faced with evidence to the contrary, the Northern Ireland deputy First Minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, has admitted that he was not, as he had claimed in an interview with RTÉ’s Marian Finucane, in Portlaoise prison when “Patrick Duffy was killed and his body secretly buried”. As the News Letter reports In a statement, [Martin McGuinness] said: “The facts are that I served a six-month sentence in Portlaoise jail in 1973 and another in …

HBO’s Michael Lombardo: “Belfast is not the most cosmopolitan of cities to spend half of the year.”

Pete Baker on June 12, 2014, 10:32 pm

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With so much of some Northern Ireland Executive ministers‘ time and effort [and other people’s money! – Ed] focused on exploiting the international success of HBO’s Game of Thrones to promote Northern Ireland overseas, it’s perhaps unfortunate, but refreshing, that HBO’s director of programming, Michael Lombardo, has given an honest answer to a straight question – as the BBC report here. From the New York Magazine’s Vulture blog The whole production seems so daunting that I didn’t know if an eighth book would …

Tourism figures for 2013 bring us down to earth

Brian Walker on June 3, 2014, 10:18 am

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The figures for tourism to Northern Ireland in 2013 out last week show a more modest reality than the hype suggesting it’s just about the most visited place on the planet. The numbers visiting from overseas amounted to just 9,000. Home holidays and short trips and family visits accounted for most of the rest. It’s not a terrible record, much as you’d expect in fact, but it shows yet again the limitations of marketing hype. You have to remember that this …

The next Chief Constable… is George Hamilton

Pete Baker on May 29, 2014, 3:46 pm

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Having “unanimously” agreed to appoint Matt Baggott as PSNI Chief Constable in 2009 for his strong advocacy of “community-style policing”, the Northern Ireland Policing Board, or its party political members, might be said to be experiencing buyer’s regret. Alternatively, those same political parties have undermined the outgoing Chief Constable throughout his tenure by putting their own party political concerns ahead of the ‘greater good’ – by word, and by deed. [“ahem* – Ed]. ANYhoo… with Matt Baggott announcing his …