The media is failing people by avoiding inconvenient truths, writes Paul Allen.
The Irish thrive on blaming others for their woes. We blame the British, the Catholic Church and just about anyone else that saves us from embracing collective responsibility for our own missteps. But it is high time for people to grow up. We claim we want the truth, but it would appear that we can’t handle the truth.
Enda Kenny is now facing a backlash for telling people something they desperately don’t want to hear yet alone believe — we are all to blame for the economic crisis.
The Taoiseach told a gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the problem with Ireland’s economy was that “people went mad borrowing” in a climate where greed saw the system spiral out of control and ultimately crash.
This is of course an oversimplification of our economic downfall, yet it is in essence relatively accurate. The poor judgement of our political leaders and the corrupt nature of certain financiers and developers was all driven by a collective giddy greed that gripped our nation at the height of the boom. The vast majority of us were crying, “more, more, more” when in fact we should have been increasing taxes and cutting our spending levels.
Speak with any rational Irish person about this and they will agree that while the levels of blame rise significantly depending on your role in the crash, we all ultimately have to take a certain amount criticism.
But to utter such words in public is tantamount to treason. This warped view of reality is being fed into and fuelled by a media that constantly uses politicians, developers and bankers as scapegoats.
Minister for Transport and Tourism Leo Varadkar condemned this cynicism and highlighted how the media offers a “sugar-coated” truth rather than exposing the real facts. He is right.
The media has become so cynical of politicians and their roles, that it is affecting the balance portrayed in the pages of our newspapers and the broadcasts of our national news.
It is so easy to blame whoever is public enemy number one at any given moment, whether it’s Sean Fitzpatrick, Michael Fingleton or Sean Dunne. However, these people did not operate in a vacuum and were part of a culture that was allowed flourish during the boom years.
Admittedly Enda Kenny did make a major error of judgement, but it was not telling the truth in Switzerland. It was telling Irish people what they wanted to hear seven weeks ago when he said — “You are not responsible for the crisis.”
We all criticise politicians for feeding us lies before an election and then once in office breaking these promises. But maybe this says more about us than it does about them.
So now as the media turns on Enda and Leo for telling the truth, at least Irish people will now have two others to blame for their woes.
The media’s obsession with simplicity and scapegoats often means the real story can go unreported, writes Paul Allen.
Every drama needs a villain and this week Francesco Schettino neatly fitted the bill. The captain of the Costa Concordia, which crashed into rocks off the Italian coast and capsized, was portrayed as a lazy stereotype in a veracious media environment that loves simplicity.
The Italian was quickly caricatured as a swashbuckling, wine-swilling lothario with such an eye for the ladies he was willing to put the lives of all his passengers at risk.
The Daily Mail, which led the charge, was only too willing to believe that most of its readers would readily understand the cliché that all Italian me are lazy, workshy womanisers.
When the captain, desperately tried to defend himself, claiming he had not abandoned ship but had accidentally fallen into a lifeboat while aiding passengers as the ship tilted on its side, the guffaws in the press were audible.
There is little doubt that if he had happened to be Spanish, images of Manuel, the Fawlty Towers waiter, would have been splashed all over the tabloid press.
To add to the comic book portrayal of this horrible disaster a 25-year-old mystery blonde ballerina, Domnica Cemortan, who reportedly was on the bridge of the cruise liner when the vessel ran into rocks, leapt to the Captain’s defence.
“[Capt. Schettino] is one of the best captains in the company. He is very skilful and experienced when it comes to manoeuvring the ship in enclosed spaces, like harbours,” Cemortan told the Daily Telegraph.
Of course the more sober and straightforward reporting as put forward by the Telegraph was spun by the Daily Mail as it pondered: “Was Captain Coward trying to impress glamorous blonde ballerina when he hit the rocks?”
At the heart of this sordid tale are the 11 people who have been confirmed dead and the 30 who are still missing after the disaster. While the official investigation into the incident will no doubt reveal the full extent to which the captain was at fault, his position makes it clear that he rightly has to take responsibility for at least some of the blame. However, the ease at which the media immediately made him the scapegoat meant that many of the critical issues that have arisen out of this incident have for the most part been glided over.
What about the company behind the cruise liner? What about the safety standards on big passenger ships? Indeed, if we are to believe what has been written this week about Captain Schettino it would seem that ship captains that roam the high seas are a law unto themselves. This I would wager is far from the truth.
So even if the Captain is as portrayed, what type of company and what type of regulatory system allows such a person to be in charge of the safety of thousands of passengers? Sadly, as far as the media is concerned, such a story line does not make for sexy headlines.
The media loves portraying black and white scenarios, but does not do grey very well. Indeed, even though new media has seen the number of news sources flourish over the past few years, it has not given the public a more diverse and thorough insight into the stories of the day.
Indeed, it would seem that in our media saturated lives the snappy headline, sound bite and catch-all cliché still rule supreme.
Thankfully, for the families of those who lost their lives, the inquiry rather than the media will bring to light who the real villains in this tragedy are.
Channel Five’s Celebrity Big Brother has once again underlined the extent to which the term ‘celebrity’ has become meaningless. Full of the usual mix of fame hungry has-beens and wannabes, the show is simply a circus showing the inflated and often fragile egos of the contestants as they contrive to win the affections of the viewership.
The depths some people will go to gain notoriety or ‘fame’ is incredible, just ask Natasha Giggs. You would think after being caught having an affair with her husband’s brother, Ryan Giggs, she would want to lay low for a while. But now she is on Big Brother one would hope chasing fame rather than ignominy.
Dublin’s beautiful Georgia Salpa is also hoping her appearance on the show will help her take the UK by storm. However, she is now finding out the hard edge of reality TV after becoming one of the first people (along with some other z-lister) to face eviction.
But while Georgia is one of the lucky ones as she has little to lose and lots to gain career wise by her exposure on national television, most people have little idea of what a double-edged sword the pursuit of fame can be.
Sinead O’Connor’s talent is unquestionable, but the same cannot be said of some of her life choices. And while we all make mistakes and errors of judgement, few would want to broadcast them. However, thanks to Twitter Sinead’s life has become something of a media circus.
But while on one hand she tweets freely about intimate elements of her personal life, which are willing snapped up by the media, she gets highly irritated when journalists begin to focus too much attention her. This led to the headline in this week’s Sunday Independent — “Don’t f**k with me or my husband.”
The problem is when it comes to courting media coverage it is not simply a tap that can be turned off and turned on when it suits.
But just like Celebrity Big Brother, mindlessly embracing Twitter or indeed Facebook is more likely going to turn you into a sucker rather than a star.
Labour leader Ed Milliband was the latest to put his foot in it when he tweeted a message regarding the death of Blockbusters’ former host Bob Holness with the line, “A Generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters.”
But while there are plenty of public figures and celebrities seemingly only too happy to enter the Dumb Tweet of the Year Awards, it is the public’s lack of awareness of the power of Twitter that is shocking.
One idiot has thankfully been arresting this week for racially abusing former Liverpool footballer Stan Collymore via Twitter. While in the US a 16-year-old employee of the pizza chain Papa John’s was sacked after referring to a customer as “lady chinky eyes” on a receipt and then posting it on the social network site.
While we may mock the crass wannabes that are willing to suffer the humiliation and mental torture in a desperate bid to save or start their careers in the Big Brother House, many are willing to ruin their lives or suffer the double-edged sword of media intrusion all for the sake of a dumb Tweet or foolish Facebook post.
However, even for established stars reality television is now so mainstream that its pitfalls almost seem unavoidable.
Singer Brian Kennedy just last week got caught in the line of fire of reality television. He allowed the Daily Mirror’s entertainment reporter Paul Martin get under his skin and ended up throwing a glass of red wine over him during the celebrity version of Come Dine With Me on TV3. But why should such a talented performer be dragged down to the same level as a British tabloid hack? The show’s producers obviously knew what they were doing when inviting Martin and Brian sadly took the bait.
The fact is that while reality television, Twitter or Facebook can give you instant notoriety, it is important to beware — they often bite back.