Newspaper Watch: The power of repetition

In the Sunday Independent on 10 September, Brendan O'Connor bravely took on "the media, who love a consensus" in support of Michael McDowell. He informed us that despite the consensus that "Liz O'Donnell will be Taoiseach", McDowell was the only "serious contender". O'Connor saw this as a "stark example of the media choosing what it wanted to believe over reality". A delusion caused by the fact that "the media dislikes McDowell", mostly "because he is viewed as being right-wing, which the media regards as the greatest crime a man can commit". In contrast, "the vast majority of the electorate" is right-wing.

However, O'Connor's media consensus was rather difficult to locate. On Friday 8 September, the day after Harney's resignation, the Irish Times lead article reported that "Michael McDowell was seen as the early front-runner". The following day their report was entitled 'McDowell candidacy gathers strong support' and their editorial on Monday 11 September greeted the coronation of the "intellectual powerhouse behind the PDs" with the observation that "it should never have been otherwise".

The Examiner's coverage developed in a similar vein. On Friday, they referred to McDowell as the "clear favourite" and by Saturday they announced that the contest was "turning into a coronation" for McDowell. Their post-coronation editorial predicted that McDowell would "re-invigorate the party" and see the PDs "punching well above their weight".

Although the Independent referred to Liz O'Donnell as "the early favourite" in Friday's lead story, they balanced this by calling McDowell "the obvious choice". By the following day, they had joined the media consensus, with a front-page article headlined, 'McDowell in control as top PDs back him'.

Thus, it's fair to surmise that the media consensus against McDowell did not exist. In fact, one of the only articles that got it wrong was a piece in the review section of the Sunday Independent which recounted how Liz O'Donnell was the "current favourite" and warned of the "danger that the leadership of the PDs is going to become a woman's job". The article was written by Brendan O'Connor.

O'Connor's claims of a widespread, hidden, left-liberal media agenda against the conservative 'silent majority' are nothing out of the ordinary. Such claims are virtually never substantiated with evidence or quotation. Instead they rely on repetition for effect. For example, both John Waters and Breda O'Brien regularly use their columns in the Irish Times to decry the anti-religious bias of the Irish media, yet it is virtually impossible to find an article advocating atheism. Last week, in this very magazine, Waters told us how Amnesty International "seeks to excuse all manner of abuses and injustices as long as they are left-wing inspired" without so much as a morsel of evidence. He claimed that "the present generation of left-liberals" have no harsh words for Castro about the prevalence of low-grade prostitution in Cuba. In reality, even the pages of Socialist Worker bemoan the fact that "corruption, prostitution and poverty once again haunt the streets and tenements of Havana".

It is testament to the power of repetition that many people believe the preposterous idea that the mass media – controlled by vast corporations and primarily dependant for revenue on advertising paid for by other vast corporations – could possibly have a left-wing bias.p