Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and other old political parties are terrified. Let’s not kids ourselves.
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Up till the emergence of home computers/devices becoming a now traditional electronic thing around homes, a long-standing tradition in most households in Ireland, was to get national news via RTE and the national paper dailies. The emergence and growth of social media has changed all that. These days, many people don’t have time to turn into “Morning Ireland” and similar as they travel to work, as they do their work, get home, feed themselves/kids and try sort out ever-increasing bills, etc, arriving by email or post. Citizens gather their news in glimpses at online news setups, Facebook posts, briefly through Twitter comments and even Youtube clips.
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Old traditional media is dying – and this terrifies old political parties. Even worse terrifying for same parties, is that they – the political elite – cannot as much, control, behind closed door buy-off such setups – by throwing money at them, by hinting at future job rewards for favours given or other rewards for such things as editorial news cutting antics! Print media is absolutely dying. Only last week it was announced by a top company representative that within five years, the likes of the Irish Independent and others might only be found Monday to Saturday online only. Online news reporting is becoming more mainstream while national newspaper printing is dying.
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Yesterday in the Dail we witnessed Michael Martin attacking one online news outlet. He provided absolutely NO EVIDENCE whatsoever to show that the outlet was Russia backed. NO EVIDENCE to show that the news outlet was Russia controlled. He just threw out conspiracy Russia threads in hope to try take down one outlet. One of a growing trend of birthing online news media setups. Births that are increasing. If Michael Martin (and his party) are trying to stem a tide of online outlets that are growing, from them reporting facts and providing copies of documents that everyone else can/should independently check, Michael Martin is now changing into King Canute, in farcically also trying to hold back an incoming tide!
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The Ditch is one online news outlet. There are others. The Village Magazine. The Phoenix Magazine and more. They are growing while print newspapers are dying. Not literally overnight – but they are dying – and even their owners have seen this, acknowledged this and are taking drastic actions. All this means, is that it’s become much harder for any party to control, pressure, buy off or even silence media outlets. They could far better do it years ago when they were far less news outlets. Not today.
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For the moment, the best they can still try to do, is stop older traditional news outlets in TV or paper form, from reporting what more and more online news services are sharing to the masses. For the moment… That’s all. The more online news outlets greater report what the likes of RTE, Indo’ and Irish Times (just for example) don’t report, the more same papers are exposed for their under-reporting of greater facts that online readers are increasingly growing aware of.
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Online readers are increasingly noting also, what the older traditional outlets are suspiciously, more regularly leaving out! The traditional outlets have started to cop on that we are noticing it!
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For the moment however, political attempts are being made, to try stop further sharing of reporting being done by online setups. They can try, but like Michael Martin and King Canute, they will eventually have to acknowledge that they are wasting their time in trying to stop an incoming tide. …And that thought terrifies them and their political parties. Greater truths are out there, being more shared and for them, it’s getting harder to stop it being spread. Reality in 2023.