Joe MacAnthony
Apr 30th, 2008 by Donagh
“The point about a free press as presided over by O’Reilly’s INM is that editorial content is a matter for journalists, not proprietors.”
So says Eamon Dunphy in his April 12th Irish Times article about battle between Denis O’Brien and Tony O’Reilly for the ownership of Independent News and Media. The article has raised the heckles of Vincent Browne in the latest edition of Village magazine and with good reason. The article, Browne argues is a ‘characteristically sycophantic peon of praise for Tony O’Reilly’s stewardship of Independent Newspapers’.
It seems that whenever anyone wants to cite a benchmark for journalistic integrity or demonstrate the existence of a press free from the tyranny of government they look to Woodward and Bernstein. And so, it is no different with Dunphy.
I’ve finally written an article for ILR…
The Irish Hospitals Sweepstake - some scam, huh? Amazing how the guys in at the top from the start managed to get away from close scrutiny for so long. McGrath’s patriot credentials certainly helped. The sweepstake was projected as a patriotic project for helping the underfunded health services in third world Ireland. The diaspora Irish in North America and Britain (maybe those in Oz too?) responded patriotically to the needs of the old country and bought-sold those tickets. I suppose so long as the project brought so much hard currency, especially dollars, into the plodding economy, the politicians didn’t ask pertinent/impertinent questions.
{Incidentally, McGrath was so patriotic that he wrote generous cheques for his old comrade-in-arms, the leftwing Peadar O’Donnell, to finance the printing of The Bell magazine during the hungry 40s and 50s when O’Donnell was business manager/assistant editor.}
Independent Newspapers are so “brave” these days exposing paedophile clergy and blaming all the ills of society between 1922 and 1970 on the priest-ridden mentality. Yes, even if they so readily splashed the discredited (Sr.) Norah Wall child rape verdict on their front pages, and declined to publish similar banner headline apologies when the ex-nun was vindicated after a key witness was found to be mentally unstable.
Joe MacAnthony took on an entrenched secular money interest with his researched expose of the Sweepstakes scam, a scam that pointed the finger at the respected high and mighty in the worlds of Dublin finance and political establishment. But since newspaper proprietorship enjoys a symbiotic relationship with high finance and its advertising connections, the Joe MacAnthony research went too close to the bone. The fourth estate is a player, not a disinterested observer. Take a bow, Mr. MacAnthony. You are one of the principled journalists.