May Day Media Reaches New Low

national | summit mobilisations | news report

Sunday April 11, 2004 17:43

by Aileen - Dublin Grassroots Network

grassrootsdublin at yahoo dot com

Suspicious phonecall to Dublin Grassroots seems to come from the the Star. Journalists now creating the story they want to report.

I’m digging my garden on a warm Easter Sunday when my mobile phone rings. It is a private number. I answer it and a male voice tells me he is very interested in getting involved in the May day events. That’s great, I say and start to tell him about our next organisation meeting, inviting him to attend. He says he is in Cork. I suggest he look at our webpage (www.struggle.ws) on which we have outlined the meeting points for the events we are organising and join us on the day. ‘

Do you need any help’ he asks and I start to tell him to bring pots and pans for the Bring the Noise March on Farmleigh.
However he quickly interrupts me saying ‘I have explosives and guns. ‘
‘Are you taking the piss?’ I say.
‘No’ he says. ‘I have explosives and guns'.
‘We aren’t interested’ I say.
‘I won’t be stopped’ he says.
I’m going to hang up now’ I say ‘ because I think you are taking the piss’

I hang up.

Within minutes my phone rings again. This time my phone shows the number, I answer it and the caller identifies herself as Edel Kennedy from the Star. She says she wants to ask me about the violence organised for May Day. I smell a rat.

‘Did you just ring me’ I ask? She doesn’t say no. She says ‘Why? Did the same number come up?’. No, I said, but I think I just got a phone call from the Star.’ No, I didn’t ring you ‘she says. She then continues to ask me if we have been in touch with groups from abroad who are planing violence (no). I tell her that no named groups are individuals have threatened violence. None of the reports of violence come from named sources. I ask her does she know of any named groups or individuals. She hesitates and the only name she comes up with is the Wombles.. I tell her that the Wombles haven’t threatened violence. I ask her does she know anything about the Wombles. She doesn’t. As an afterthought she asks about the issues we are protesting about, clearly disappointed that the story isn’t panning out the way she wanted it to.

I can’t definitively prove that the two phone-calls were related.

But it seems suspicious, and it does seem that some journalists are now trying to set people up so they can write stories that raise tension and create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

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Comments (13 of 13)

Meal ticket

by Moving Target

Sun Apr 11, 2004 18:36

That figures. I have no doubt whatever that some of the wilder comments on indymedia.ie are planted there by journalists so they can use them as backup for whatever outrageous claims they intend to make in their articles.
Its all about money. The wilder and more sensational the story, the more likely they are to get it published. Its their meal-ticket, and they don't intend to let the truth get in the way of their mortgage payments or the down payment on that new Porsche, and they don't care who gets trampled on in the process.

Its sad that a profession once respected should now be perceived as being on the same level as prostitution. I hope thats not too unfair to prostitutes.

If any of them want to deny that analysis they are free to do so here. Full names and contact names would be appreciated for verification purposes.

Bring it on.

If I was you

by concerned about mayday hype

Sun Apr 11, 2004 18:39

I'd call the gardai and tell them exact time of call and number from which you recieved next call. Tell them what happened and ask them to investigate. Records are backed up and available to gardai for 7 years.

The gardai know all about it.

by Badman

Sun Apr 11, 2004 18:54

Sure who do you think made the first call (and then tipped off the journo). You don't think the journos are making this shit up themselves do you?

Disgrace

by Starstruvk - UCD Left

Sun Apr 11, 2004 19:13

Yet again the forces that be have tried to blacken the name of activism through their skullduggery.The Star has time after time insulted the inrelligence of the Irish people with that bullshit they print.
However i would like to add that it is not only the tabloid rags that are up to no good.
Obviously we on the left wouldnt expect any support from mainstream media(,although i dont see why not) but the more reputable publishings are also guilty of subconscious propaganda.
Only last week the Irish Times had a half page article on Eoin Ryan (FF Member standing for European election).The article was about how he and his wife had met!
Then as i was flicking through the magazine section yesterday,.low and behold, a full page article on what the good Mr Ryan likes to cook!
Either hes a very good man who we should all take example from or he has a good friend in the Times who enjoys engaging in a spot of subconcious electioneering.
All that glistens is not gold.Lost a lot of respect for the Times.
Better give them a good story on Mayday-maybe Eoin Ryan could write it...

lack of reports from the irish times

by pc

Sun Apr 11, 2004 21:05

hasn't the times being actaully pretty quite on the whole mayday thing...
been a few things on enlargement

isn't that just as bad?

Chekov's new play

by Chekov

Sun Apr 11, 2004 23:44

It's called "Uncle Tony" and it's set in the newsroom of an Irish daily paper. Here is a sneak preview of one of the scenes.

Two hacks, John and Mary, are sitting in their office surfing the internet on Easter Sunday. They are bored and resentful of the fact that they have to work and that, due to the holiday, they have a terrible lack of news to fill their paper. The editor enters in a bad temper.

EDITOR: The minister's been on the phone again, screaming at me about the grave threat to the state posed by the Mayday hairies. Effing and bliinding he was. Jesus, he even had the big boss on to me, telling me how important it was that we do our duty to the country and air the minister's concerns and all that crap. Can't you find some new angle to run on this? You should be out infiltrating these groups and digging up the dirt. What do I pay you for?

JOHN: For chrissakes, I already told you that there isn't anything more there. We've done everything that we could. We've looked at all their websites, dropped provocative messages around the place, gone to their meetings, phoned them up and grilled them from every angle. We're fucking winging it on the stuff that we've already written.

MARY: It's becoming embarrassing. That primetime programme last week made us look like fools. People are thick but they're not that thick.

EDITOR: I don't want to hear this crap. Do some real work for a change. Research it. I want a new angle.

Editor leaves.

MARY: Fuck. Any ideas?

John turns to look at computer screen.

JOHN: The bastards deleted my comment from indymedia and nobody has responded to my call to arms on urban75. We can't run that again, we used it two weeks ago.

MARY: I have an idea. How about we ring them up and pretend that we want to take part in their movement. We can be really enthusiastic about it and then suddenly let them know that we have guns and explosives.

JOHN: Brilliant, I see it now. "Our brave undercover correspondant infiltrated their movement and offered to set up an arms smuggling trade." If they hesitate for a second we can nail them. Even if they flat out refuse to have anything to do with us, they probably won't report it to the guards: "The protestors have kept the arms offer secret and are believed to be considering the deal. The Garda press Office has confirmed that the offer of arms has not been reported to the authorities."

MARY: "We Foil Mayday Anarchists Arms Deal" - I can see it now. That'll be front page. Bingo. Okay, you better phone that guy in the guards who's handling this, that English guy from the Met, he should play ball.

Excerpt Ends.

Pie the media

by Pieman

Mon Apr 12, 2004 04:50

The hacks want to instigate violence for Mayday? OK, lets pie them.
Heres a new slogan, and it rhymes with 'Be the media':
'Pie the media'

resulting headlines

by hmm

Mon Apr 12, 2004 11:59

"our brave journalists suffer anarchist chemical weapons attack"

and their newspaper sales rocket to unprecedented levels..
good idea

Pblished?

by Barry

Tue Apr 13, 2004 14:34

Did the Star publish anything

a 'sensible move'

by maalox - cayley digraph

Wed Apr 14, 2004 19:54

"I'd call the gardai and tell them exact time of call and number from which you recieved next call. Tell them what happened and ask them to investigate."

-ahem-

I'd just bug my own phone and send the tapes in- saves taxpayers' money y'know...

irish times

Wed Apr 14, 2004 21:43

as mentioned two reports in irish times

one going on about how the gardai have no powers similar to that of england in stopping football hooligans coming in the country to stop so called "known troubled makers"

and then a couple of pages later... a report on the media mayhem of the past few weeks highlighting the ridiculous and dangerous claims made by the media and gov over the last while causing unecessary tension for all ....

the arguement that just cos the main stream media is diseased doesn't mean you shouldn't do your best to write decent stories along side the crap is well known, and you have to applaud people for it

if you have the paper handy you'll notice on the letters page, someone referring to article re iraq etc saying if your inclusion of the column by mark stern is an attempt to balance out your other artilces on the subject, and therefore a balcne of views from all sides that all wle and good but why simpy print a article full of lies

which is exactly the situation with these two articles, the media mayhem article had photos of the scare story front pages of others papers, it might as well have turned back a couple of pages snapped a photo and stuck it in with the rest of them.

a so called serious piece(cos it the times) simply calls all foriegn protestors, hooligans all that was missing was a bit of red ink...

All well and good...

by MediaGuy - National TV Station

Mon Apr 26, 2004 09:17

mediaguy at online dot ie

never mind

haah

Ok fair enough, the media are probably blowing the may day thing complatly out of proportion at the moment. But the majority of the reported facts are from sources like the gardai or Gov press offices. Lets just wait till after the protests and then come back in here saying then whether the hype was false or true. At the end of the day protests are fine, but when you have extremists coming from all over the world, specifically coming to cause trouble, it will be the reputation of the peaceful protestors that will be ruined. See ya all in here again on 2nd of may :) Ill be either coming in to say you were totally right, and i was wrong or Told ya so!

After mayday..

by David

Mon Apr 26, 2004 09:48

When the protests pass off peacefully or the police were clearly responsible for any small scale violence, the media will suddenly develop mass amnesia about all the lies they told in the run up and will concentrate on making up more lies for when George w shrub comes to visit in june..

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May Day Media Reaches New Low

Comments (13 of 13)