Haiti’s Cowboy

Reagan’s Haitian legacy…

via Persistence of Vision via A Tiny Revolution

First a documentary clip featuring Jean Dominique, the radio journalist who ran Radio Haiti-Inter.

and then the latest RealNews report on Haiti – ‘US military enforces attacks on Haitian unions’

Matthew Elderfield – Irish National Hero

New MediaShot paying tribute to Ireland’s saviour: Our new kick-ass financial regulator

There’s a Facebook page too. Bonkers.

Reflected glory, aaaaaaahhh

In response to Louise Holden’s piece in today’s Irish Times, where the Times basks in the reflected glory of Morgan Kelly’s wisdom and foresight, because they happened to publish a few of his articles seconds before the bubble burst:

Dear Louise Holden,

Thanks for the interesting piece on Morgan Kelly in today’s Irish Times. However, I wanted to ask why there wasn’t much discussion of whether the media played their part in labeling Kelly as a pariah. For instance, there’s no explanation why “Morgan Kelly” returns only 2 results from the Irish Times archive Dec1999-Jun2007 and one of those is for Fingal Golf Classic.

Best wishes,

David

[I'm told by someone that due to some rare unforeseeable technical anomaly  I could be out by some 1838 entries, however, I'm 100% certain of my correctness, until such time that the factual evidence is provided, then as with all good economists (I'm not an economist) I reserve the right to revise my opinion]

The media’s annual festival of teacher hating

Posted on The Irish Times today in response to an article by Anne Marie Hourihane about the teachers’ conferences:

Atta girl, Anne-Marie – brownie points well earned there. Right on editorial message. Madam Editor will be delighted with you, rest assured. An entire class of public sector workers written off because they exercised their democratic right to express their feelings about disastrous government policy. Don’t think I’ve seen another column to equal this for sneering, ill-informed prejudice. Not a single line of it even remotely pretending to engage with the substantive issues that were debated at length at the teachers conferences. Not a word about what Don Ryan actually said during his address to the TUI. Anyone reading coverage of these events during the last week could be forgiven for thinking journalists typically have the concentration span of a gnat – and half the intelligence. I’ll give you a mark for originality though: contriving to make a victim out of Mary Coughlan is a great joke. And fundamentally sexist too: Coughlan was treated to a dose of the same, fully justified anger as is felt by men and women up and down the country and which every government minister is experiencing wherever they dare to show their faces.  
 
Public sector workers no longer need to put up with being caricatured and insulted by journalists in order to find news, thank God. There are plenty of alternative sources of news to choose from. So Anne Marie, want to know how YOU look to us? Here’s a good analysis by Dr Gavin Titley of some of the Irish Times coverage of the teachers’ conferences. http://www.mediabite.org/article_-Keeping-it-Real–by-Dr-Gavan-Titley_823780188.html

Cabaret or Punch and Judy?

Went along to the Leviathan gig the other night to see what the fuss was about. The mini adventure (c) was nearly scuppered before it started when I was accosted by a surly ticket attendant attempting to releave me of €17.50. Following the mugging we were greeted by musical comedy being enjoyed by the middle class.

The debate itself was of the old school left/right variety. McWilliams opened the debate with tried and tested comical jibes against Kieran Allen’s political inclinations, setting the tone for the debate. But this is par for the course of course. Funny how a Fianna Fáil backbencher can sit on stage unencumbered by ideological stigmata, but a marxist / socialist has to be outed and marked for ridicule.

In a debate on economic recovery, the fact a ‘dissident’ (just like the Greens are dissidents) Fianna Fáiler (though you wouldn’t know it looking at his website http://www.johnmcguinness.com/), whose party presided over the destruction of the Irish economy, the burdening of future generations with speculators’ debt, the support of two criminal leaders and on top of all that, decades of collusion with a church that conspired to cover up/facilitate child abuse, left almost entirely unscathed is about all you need to know to predict how the night played out.

There was little or no discussion of the economic implications of further wages cuts and redundancies in the public sector, no discussion of the knock-on effects in terms or mortgage defaults etc. The debate centred entirely on the assumption that the public sector is overpaid and inefficient (because it is over staffed and overpaid).

One former teacher suggested that the debate had failed because it sought to pit public against private sector, instead of dealing with the real issue, low paid versus excessively paid. This gained a quiet rumbling of support, but this was quickly drowned out by further vague condemnation of ‘bench marking’ and wild accusations of unions ‘running the country’ to ruin.

The audience rounded on the union reps for their lack of ambition in invigorating employment. The consensus being that government money is being diverted from employment programmes to public sector pensions. The idea that stimulus was being binned for bailout was considered a diversion.

In support of this, McWilliams, the impartial host, mocked anyone that drew attention to the fundamental culprits of the crisis – the bankers, developers and politicians.

This post is particularly useless for anyone that actually wants to know what was said at the debate, but I zoned out after about 20 mins, so this tweet summary will have to do:

Unions hounded, only passing ref 2 econ implicatins of public redundancies. Allen didnt get a look in. Union reps spoke vacuously 1:52 AM Apr 9th via API

John McGuinness played the Green party card, he’ll be the change. Debate shouted down by McWilliams prodigy. Delevan told a joke 1:54 AM Apr 9th via API

Sarah Carey thinks everyone is to blame except the media

On last Friday’s Late Late show  [first item on the programme] a panel of journalists including Matt Cooper, Kevin Myers, Sarah Carey and Ger Colleran lamented the impotence of the opposition in the face of Fianna Fail’s economic and political mismanagement, rightly deploring the egregious carry on that has caused so much grief for so many people.  That was all fine and dandy, being a commentary that was after the fact but no less true for all that.  The one place they could not, or would not go in their deliberations was into any discussion about the role that the media played in helping to bring the crisis about. 

‘We have no excuse, everyone knew’

In this morning’s Irish Times Sarah Carey begins her colum today with these astounding words:

No one can say they weren’t told how bad our economic policy and loose regulation were for our future

In other words, the media were doing a brilliant job throughout and had exposed at every turn the corruption, the TDs and Ministers who were securing loans from Fingleton and Anglo on the nod, the failures of the financial regulator and all the rest of it.  That this stuff might all have been an open secret among the political/media/business in-crowd would not surprise many people at this stage.  But did the rest of us have any inkling that this was happening?  The vast majority hadn’t a clue.   The real question is, did the media investigate or report it thoroughly while it was ongoing?   Did they fuck! 

David Manning of MediaBite (@Media_Bite on twitter) wrote a much praised piece for Village magazine last year about the role of the Irish media in the property bubble which is worth the read if you haven’t seen it already.  It delineates the overwhelmingly supportive consensus that existed among media commentators and editorial writers about the boom times and how so many were adamant that any negative media commentary would rock the boat and be damaging for the economy. 

Couldn’t refrain from posting this comment under Sarah Carey’s article this morning:

Yet another journalist who sees fault in everyone and everything except the media itself. Sarah Carey exonerates the dismal performance of the media in helping to create this situation by the gross generalisation that ‘everyone knew’. Maybe Irish Times readers who happened to read Morgan Kelly a few times had a fair idea but they are a small, affluent minority of the whole population. Aside from about half a dozen voices – routinely shouted down by their own colleagues – the media were a total disgrace. The Irish Times itself, with its annual Property Awards, its lucrative property section and strong Progressive Democrat editorial leanings was out in front of the pack, calling for ever more ‘liberalisation’ and all sorts of other now demonstrably failed policies. The media were cheerleading and promoting the madness all the way – either through positive coverage of the lunatic carry on by the elites or – worse – by a wilful omission to enquire and report much further into what was happening than they did.  
 
I’m go[i]ng to copy this post before submitting it because the last time I posted critically under a Sarah Carey column, my comment was censored.