Stripping the news bare

Readers should always look between the lines of any story published by our profit-seeking media and ask why it was it published before accepting the 'facts' allegedly reported in it, advises Eoin Ó Murchú

Am I the only journalist who noticed that the four Very Important Members of the Independent (not International, Bertie!) Monitoring Committee were sitting up there stark naked, like the emperor with no clothes, while they asked the public to admire the width of their suits?

The IMC was set up to "reassure" Unionists that the IRA would be kept up to the mark on paramilitary activity, and now even Bertie Ahern himself and foreign minister Dermot Ahern are declaring that future progress in the peace process depends on a second favourable report from this IMC next January. Otherwise ...

But there's a simple question. What investigative resources does the IMC have? What is their budget for informers, or do they skulk around the back lanes of Belfast and Derry, and pick up their whispers on the wind?

In fact, they have no team, no budget, no information. They just ask the Special Branch, North and South, and Britain's notorious intelligence organisation, MI5. These organisations are not disinterested founts of objective facts. They are partisan, bitterly anti-Republican players in the war which the rest of us are trying to bring to an end. For the most part they are under some degree of control by their respective governments – which is why we've had one semi-favourable report from the IMC – but no one can rely on that.

The fact is that it isn't Lord (no less) Alderdice, former CIA man Dick Kerr, former British police chief John Grieve, and former Dublin overseer of the Special Branch in the South Joe Brosnan (popularly known as Pierce because of his James Bond fantasies) who decide these questions, so why should anyone pretend that it is?

Of course, they aren't the only naked people strutting their stuff. The Workers' Party have finally outlived their usefulness and party president Seán Garland is facing extradition on charges of masterminding a massive international forgery scheme, with North Korean "expert" help, no less! The problem is that there is no visible evidence that the Workers' Party has the resources attributed to them. Their offices are less than modest, their publications are few and limited, their staffing levels are small. Seán Garland himself lives in an ordinary house and drives an ordinary car, so where is this phenomenal wealth that he is accused of having amassed? It smells of set-up to me.

Down in Killarney, Fianna Fáil weren't exactly naked, but they looked a little bit threadbare on the Republican front. Clearly the party is worried about the electoral challenge from Sinn Féin. But if Bertie Ahern thinks he will head this off by suddenly remembering that the 1916 rising should be honoured after all the years of neglect, he is wrong. Sinn Féin obviously has a strong nationalist appeal, but its support is primarily based on its work on the ground on the social and economic issues of equality, justice and national sovereignty.

Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, the media shot themselves in the foot with their disgusting and despicable coverage of Liam Lawlor's death. In their defence they blamed their "usually reliable sources". But it is farcical to suggest that a Russian policeman (even if one could be found who speaks the sort of English that Aongus Fanning of the Sunday Independent and Nóirín Hegarty of the Sunday Tribune understand) would ever imagine that the main airport highway in Moscow – which is akin to our own M50 – was a red light district.

The real source for this story was bile and the belief that Liam Lawlor was so discredited that anything at all could be written about him.

But it just goes to show that you should always look between the lines of any story published by our profit-seeking media and ask why was it published before you accept the "facts" allegedly reported in it. In "the race to the bottom", as Bertie Ahern described it, facts are whatever the owners of the press want them to be.

So that's why there's uncritical coverage of the laughable "Independent" Monitoring Committee, why The Irish Times can publish a US dossier on Seán Garland without evaluating its plausibility, why Liam Lawlor is traduced so viciously and why serious political debate is increasingly being driven out of the columns of our national press.

It was Todd Andrews who said that freedom of the press was the freedom to write whatever the owners wanted you to write, but the answer isn't to be found in press councils and the like. The answer lies in democratisation of media ownership and access.

And the first step is for readers to use their own judgment. Look behind the headlines and always, always, consider all the angles and check "the facts" against what is logical.

Don't accept something as fact just because it's published, no matter how many people publish it. Test it against your own knowledge. Perhaps then you might see that the journalist has no clothes and that his suit is only as wide as the narrowness of his prejudices.

Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity