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E-mailOn Wednesday, the day after Enda Kenny rescued George Lee from his increasingly futile attempts at balanced coverage of the government, a man called David Bloch wrote a column for The Irish Times attacking the new Fine Gael candidate for Dublin South. Bloch, the chief executive of a recruitment company called Brightwater, didn't criticise Lee by name, but it was clear that RTÉ's former economics editor was one of the inspirations for his complaint, which focused on negative media reporting of Ireland and its economy. Bloch had sent out a mass email to friends and acquaintances the previous weekend and had received many replies. "People are screaming with frustration," Bloch reported in the Times. "They believe that sentiment and economy are inexorably linked and the media is depressing the population and thereby destroying the country."
One of his replies had argued that media coverage was "giving a desperate impression to investors, commentators etc. Also too much time pummelling those who are easy to blame – bankers, developers etc. By all means, accept there have been mistakes, learn the lessons, add regulations etc, but now time to move on and have plan for the future". Bloch himself blames the media for having taken "every statistic and turned it against the country… I would ask the media to stop depressing us all."
George Lee, of course, has often been charged with depressing us all, and with enjoying it just a little too much. If Bloch's analysis is correct, therefore, Lee has been a disastrous choice of candidate for Fine Gael. Instead of being a poll-topper, he will act as a repellent around Dublin South. People will slam doors in his face and warn their children to run in the opposite direction if they see him. South Dublin dogs will tell their grandpuppies about the day they bit the bad man from RTÉ.
The reaction to Lee so far, however, suggests that Bloch is completely off-beam with his analysis. Yes, people are depressed by the constant barrage of bad economic news, but they are so far showing a commendable reluctance to shoot the messenger. In fact, as the massive queues to shake Lee's hand in Rathfarnham and Dundrum suggest, the messenger is being embraced. And kissed and fondled too. Lee's rigorous analysis of the economy over a long period of time, his position as one of a minority of commentators who argued that the Celtic Tiger was built on sand, and his refusal to be deflected by the regular criticism from within the government and from Pollyanna figures like David Bloch, is appreciated.
There's a message here for the media in general, which is to keep doing what is doing in relation to the economy, to hold the government to account, to point out how bad things are, and to refuse to allow people to avoid responsibility for what happened. Bloch's analysis, which is essentially the Fianna Fáil analysis, is that things, while still tough, are on the up (Ireland is "now showing real signs of a return to growth", Bloch wrote last week) and that it was the situation in the wider world, and not decisions made in Ireland that caused the downturn.
Most people – Bloch's email contacts notwithstanding – recognise that analysis for the nonsense that it is. It wasn't the media that calculated that Ireland's economy would shrink by 9% this year – that was the European Commission and the ESRI. And it wasn't the media who came up with the notion that the recession in Ireland was the worst in any industrialised country since the Great Depression – the ESRI takes credit for that too. The media has reported on those analyses, as it its duty. Suggestions that it should be doing anything else are effectively calls for newspapers and broadcasters to lie to their readers and viewers, to pretend that things are other than they are, and to create the same sense of false security that helped plunge Ireland into the "economic abyss" (to quote John Gormley) in the first place.
Looked at in that light, the South Dublin by-election will also be a mini-referendum on the role of newspapers and broadcasters in reporting the affairs of this country. Should they act as cheerleaders for government policy or, armed with evidence accumulated over the years, do they point out the flaws, mistakes and cock-ups of their leaders? George Lee, before he skedaddled from RTÉ, was firmly on the side of informed criticism, and on the doorsteps of Dublin South, he appears to be learning just how much people welcomed that. He deserves whatever success comes his way.
ddoyle@tribune.ie
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It is not the media that are destroying the country. It is the politicians who have destroyed the country. Only a fool would think that if we stop talking about the "bad news" that it would go away! Another name for the "bad news" is corruption in Irish life, the 800 Quango's. The useless tribunals which are still milking the taxpayer. The hopeless system of petty, party politics in Ireland. We have plenty to talk about. It is well worth the risk of depressing ourselves because in order to get rid of the gloom and depression we have to actually tackle the core issue which is our corrupt overpaid public sector and our failed political system!
Without reform comes collapse and we deserve to collapse as a country if we cannot find the will to bring an abusive system to an end.
I don't want to hear about nurses and teachers being hard put upon. The teachers taught in pre-fabs, leaky schools with mice and rats they put up with all sorts of stuff as long as their salaries were increasing under bench marking or whatever mechanism and they were there the end of every month. They could have sorted out the problems for their pupils if they were willing to put their foot down, when the coffers were full and the money was there. But they did not! Then they got O'Keefe and still they give him power by engaging with him, when will the teachers learn?
Likewise, the nurses, they knew the system was rotten to the core with inefficiency but kept wheeling the trollies with patients on board, backwards and forwards from A and E. Again, as long as their wage cheque was there they did not really mind operating a useless, inefficient and dangerous system. Crocodile tears, that is what we have from nurses and teachers both of whom are responsible for the system of education and health that we have to day in this country! They were the foundations on which both dysfunctional systems were built and had they called the governments bluff we would have had no Harney and a much better health service. We could and should have had proper schools built by all these "Polish builders" who would have been more than willing to build them for us. They put up with the crap, put up with Harney, still put up with her, they got paid and that was good enough for them!
We need more reporting of the truth and if people are getting depressed they will stay depressed until our political masters get the message loud and clear we want REAL CHANGE.