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To 2024 date, many citizens scratch their heads while they see:
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1. Perverts get to walk free from our courts,
2. As fired TD’s are cronyism bunged jobs in the Seanad to tide them over,
3. As a sexual assaulter gets a FG Seanad position,
4. As parties stall a release of a Donegal corruption report,
5. As the same parties continue to break EU law in regard to VRT – and pay the imposed fines with public money – then say they are the “Party of law and order” and everyone else is to obey all laws!
6. As old parties continue to illegal give people’s personal data away to private companies – who then illegal export it to UK servers.
7. As same old parties continue to do illegal workplace bullying – but moralise it by calling it a “whip” system…
8. As they continue a two level pressgang operation (a) sequestering civil service staff into private company roles (longer than they are legally supposed to be) and under threat that if they don’t comply, they will lose all previous built up pension rights, etc, while (b) continuing the public pressgang operation previous called “JobPath” – now PR renamed such in the mega, still hidden national scandals buried in it, many committed at also local levels as well as national level,
9. As local corruption continues between unofficial political formed cartels, in order to award mayor roles (legal and non-legal ones) and then bulk-block out other local elected.
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…All the aforementioned AND MUCH MORE is vastly under-reported or in fact, not reported at all. Local media in particular vastly under report many matters.
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Much of the national public has come to know that RTE vastly under-reports a lot of wrongs being done by elected and department heads. All one has to do is look up on “x” (Twitter) and Facebook “#RTEcensored ” to discover just how shockingly much has been under reported or in fact, not reported at all. It’s become an unfunny running joke that RTE is massive blanking the reporting of many issues – or at best when reluctantly forced to (because other outlets have done far better, then they know they better say at least something), they report a bare modicum of some matters – while also PR spinning in as usual in any favour towards Fine Gael or Fianna Fail. Sometimes at the same time!
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Within constituency levels, local newspaper and local radio stations equally downplay or in fact, often don’t report highly important news or important information. Some of this information that they don’t report, leaves voters vastly under-informed as the real actions/non-actions and low-quality characteristics of certain election candidates for example. Example: Fine Gael going to general election run a pub brawler, a man that approached an already married woman, coming into actual physical contact (unwanted by the woman) with them before then engaging in a physical fight with a husband who stepped in to protect his wife. The brawler is the same man that previously shoved a Twix bar up a man’s rear at a music festival, took a picture of it and then apparently bragged about this sexual assault…
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All this and more still is and will be vastly under-reported at local level. In fact, much or all of it, not reported or mentioned at all when election times rolls around.
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Local media will go quiet about it all. They have at local level, already remained too quiet about it all. They will report the usual tamer stuff about what your local councillor has been attending or what they have said about the latest local issue – like potholes, like too many seagulls flying around, factories closing or even local court issues of lesser crime act – but when it comes to real hard-hitting journalism stuff? No, they won’t be printing more real serious matters about past history or present antics of old political parties or their very questionable chancers. Hard hitting political reporting it appears, is off limits for them. They regular decline to report on many questionable issues regarding dodgy characters, questionable political cartels, their lack of political representation or poor attendance, their questionable connection to long existing scandals and even their involvements in local corruption antics.
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The question therefore must be asked. “Why won’t they report more?”
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The answer is neither simple or short. There are a multitude of reasons and some of them also apply regarding news reporting at national levels too. Let’s start with just three immediate reasons.
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“The advertising they give us, doesn’t pay for our dinner every day, but it does help pay for our desert“. That’s the words of one local reporter from a big town in Ireland. He was talking about the adverts that the local and county council place within his boss’s newspaper. Previously, when the local paper harder reported for a while, about the dodgy antics and words of local Fianna Fail and Fine Gael characters, the local elected from those parties got peed off – so they used their influence (by picking up a phone and calling someone) so that a particular newspaper no longer gained any advert revenue from a county council and local town council. What was up to €30K+ every few months, went down to €0.00 overnight once the calls were made!
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The local newspaper soon got the message “Lay off the hard political stuff and you will get your county/local advertising from us back!”. The local newspaper had no choice but to comply. They faced further financial instability. They reverted to more tamer news items. They have stayed that way ever since.
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Legal reasons. The laws in Ireland regarding the ability to a number of report matters are way out of date. They are too restrictive. If you have power, influence or money, be it personal money or from a party or rich friend, then you can (a) threaten a local and national paper no problem into silence and (b) have far greater access to the Dublin highcourt and any ordinary citizen.
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The laws themselves gives piss-poor protection to many forms of journalist reporting. Fianna Fail, Labour and Fine Gael in particular, are in no hurry to create better legislative protections for reporters of truth and fact. Current legal frame setups still gift the party’s greater ability to silence those that would like to more report about them. It should be importantly noted that parallel to this constant non-action, is the opposite. The same parties are now forever creating further legislation laws to that previous information that once was accessible to inquirers, is no longer accessible. …However, the public in general are not supposed to notice all this. For all this too is vastly under-reported at local and national level.
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Many news outlets have owners and/or editors that either are of a political persuasion or just outright against other particular parties. We have the following situations:
(a) Newspapers vastly writing (spinning) articles with a slant towards Fianna Fail and Fine Gael
(b) Newspapers vastly writing attack articles more toward opposition parties to Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.
(c) Newspapers vastly under-reporting important information regarding the questionable actions of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael – besides non-reporting other matter regarding their incompetence, their continuing silence on many matters and their unwillingness to address long existing local and national issues.
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To try give a front appearance of impartiality, they maintain one reporter who is given some leeway in opinion pieces shared – but the remained of the paper is vast majority packed with opinionated others whose job it is unofficially, is to attack those who dare to deeper question or expose Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Many people all know which papers they are. One is now unofficially known as “The Daily Fine Gael newsletter”.
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In the case of RTE, where directors and heads of various departments are political appointed, or are even connected to husbands, wives and other family of politicians, a perceived bias become even more evident care of some elected getting an easy time while others (opposition) get a much harder time, including being constantly interrupted as said opposition tries to mention FF/FG scandalous media buried actions.
There are other factors to note. Many of the traditional media setups have come together to create a journalist award system. Yes, they are in effect, voting for those that they only allow intro their setup – which of course, is only willing to play by traditional methods and influences surrounding traditional reporting. Don’t play by their ‘game’, you will never gain any journalist award despite some constant excellent, well researched reporting carried out for years.
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The likes of The Village, The Ditch and others don’t get a look in, despite regular absolutely brilliant, fact based, verifiable news exposures and scandals highlighted. RTE and other traditional media setups decline to even mention the reporting of more modern setups that are indeed willing to report that the tired old gang of setups won’t. RTE for example, rarely mentions the Ditch – even though it’s produced more explosive articles about political antics and corruption in one year than many other traditional outlets – including RTE – have published in ten years. RTE still declines to even include Ditch or Village, etc, reporters in their news limited programmes or on the couch of “This Week In Politics” (#TWIP). At best, they might rare mention some of their exposures but not even give name credit to the original newer news outlets or the actual reporters that have done all the hard research work.
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All the above and much more is why increasing numbers of national and local public are distrustful of traditional media. However, if you listen to those media outlets as they produce spun PR poll numbers regarding how popular they are, the public is once again misled by same outlets. Their questions are phrased in such a way to skew underlying trends. The questions deliberately leave out other factors regarding just how much traditional media is trusted, and more.
Despite what RTE and their political supporters would have you believe, trust in RTE has suck to an all-time low. This sinking started well before more recent exposures of actual financial misdeed within the outdated setup. Trust in RTE news reporting has quietly sunk to such an extent that RTE has had to start running occasional adverts on its own TV and radio networks asserting that the public can trust it. Who are they trying to fool? Themselves or the public? Definitely the latter to start with!
While traditional media have lost a lot of credibility with increasing numbers of citizens throughout Ireland, the questionable media setups cry out about the dying of traditional news setups. Let’s be hard honest here. Their biased antics, their under-reporting ways, their exclusionary tactics and more, do themselves no favours. They might be still earning money from older generations who are sticking to their own ways of news gathering along with numbers of younger ages, but many younger people numbers are also increasingly gathering their news from non-traditional setups, and they (a) simply do not trust that they are getting a ‘full picture’ or (b) indeed, judge that they are not being told full truths via the traditional routes.
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The likes of The Ditch, the Village Magazine and others are more watched, read and followed before many people even begin to tune in, then listen to the likes of RTE and others that are judged to be as trustworthy as a local newspaper and its own self-imposed toning down or non-reporting ways.
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This is NOT to say there are just bad reporters in more local or national setups. There still exists some very good reporters at local and national level. Sadly, some of their work wrote up, is often rejected completely, watered down in bias by an overseeing editor or owner, etc, that said good reporters eventually get an untyped message too. ‘Play the game the way we want it to be or go look for another job‘.
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Many reporters have given up in trying to even submit more exposing or explosive issues to their editors or owners, because they have learned through office issued rejections or biased sentencing changes that their work will either be awash with interjected spin or simply rejected as soon as hard journalistic typed work is submitted. So, in many situations across Ireland, they have reluctantly given up in frustration and decided to stick to the more tamer stuff in order to just keep their job.
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For all the above reason and more, many national and local news setups have lost credibility, besides further revenues that they once were able to greater gather. . . Further Fianna Fail and Fine Gael Media Bribing To Come. . In part because traditional media setups are facing ruin (one of the official excuses/reasons PR told to the public), Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are coming up with a scheme to see that more public money is funnelled towards traditional media outlets. Yes, the likes of The Ditch and the Village Magazine are highly likely to be unable to access such a scheme as currently planned. This is no unfortunate coincidence. The financial rules or ‘guidelines’ that FF/FG representatives have legislative come up with, have made sure that more traditional setups are more so looked after. “Traditional setups” being the ones that will stick by more operating ways favoured by old pollical parties. Play their ‘game’ and the rewards will be greater.
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In a business sector (print media) that is ever quietly dying, the elected of government parties know that the traditional media setups will become ever more dependent on any finances that could come from government issued sources (care of the taxpayer). as such media setups more rely on such incoming money, they will of course grow more dependent on such money in order to continue existing. Government elected know this – and by effect, will have a lot of certain media outlets further ‘by the balls’. Later do damage to those political parties too much or to their individual representatives, that source of to-be-annual issued money, could no coincidence decline in large financial numbers or become non-existent.
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This unofficial type of control and influence exists at local and county council levels. Now, the parties having got away with it for years, possibly even a decade to two, are going to try take their unofficial form of media influence to a national level. The official PR will be “to support journalism, journalists and linked business setups” (words to that effect) – and it all will sound legitimate – and will be of course, to some extent. It’s meant to be. A lot of the public will swallow this excuse or reason without any further critical thinking or questioning – and the government parties know it.
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By quiet, ever more inventive backdoor routes of further influence, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael hope to keep their grip on what’s said or not said, through traditional media outlets. As social media is more relied upon for the posting and sharing of greater news, something that is greater beyond FF/FG control, the two parties desperately seek to keep alive traditional media that will if they can help it, more so continue to pulp out their own official and unofficial propaganda. It’s one more reason why they desperately (a) try to keep RTE alive and (b) for said reason, then continue to use taxpayer money will refusing to even hear or talk about “Pay-Per-View” regarding RTE.
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The public, as far as they are concerned, must be bullied, pressganged, further into a traditional media setup that of course continues to mass pulp out their party propaganda care of presenters that also have questionable political backgrounds, actions or public perceived biasness. . . Is There Hope For The Future? . The short answer is “Yes” – but it will take more of the public firstly to become aware of the current situation (you can seriously help by sharing this article), and then the public further looking beyond the traditional media setups that the old parties only want you to more stick with!
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The long-term solution of course, is to stop supporting the parties that are clearly still up to no good in their ever-continuing, deliberately kept more quiet ways. Therein lies the ultimate problem. How do the public try resolving a problem when biased traditional questionable media se
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The solution is down to you. By sharing more buried news and the thoughts of those that wish to greater tell of wrong doings, you are directly challenging the political parties, exposing that they are up to and exposing to what or whom they are quietly connected to! get on social media. Share the Ditch or Village Magazine news items along with others of verifiable fact-based decency. Each and every one of us can and must play a part of proving “information is power”. It’s about time “power” is greater returned to the public of Ireland, not just more left in the hands of questionable elected and ever losing credibility media setups.
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Jeff Rudd
11th July 2024 .
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