Churnalism, vested interests and propaganda
In their ongoing rearguard action against encroachment from online media, professional journalistic standards are the newspapers' principle propaganda weapon. Columnist John Waters has, as ever, been in the vanguard. Following an opinion piece in The Irish Times in which he came out against the Internet, he faced off with blogger Fergal Crehan of tuppenceworth.ie in a debate on Newstalk. Waters denounced the “poisonous” culture of blogging and contrasted it with the “know your facts, check your facts” tradition of the press.