Category: Social & Cultural
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Well that’s just, like, your opinion, man
This article first appeared in Village magazine, July/August 2022 edition Consider the following opinion, which may have appeared recently in a newspaper near you: Should Ireland take a leaf out of Elon Musk’s playbook, and establish a colony on Mars? The Fine Gael party has not released an official statement on their position regarding the…
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Media Blues: Pessimism about the future of media
This article first appeared in Village magazine, March/April 2022 edition Looking ahead to 2022, it is hard to feel optimistic about the current reviews of the media landscape in Ireland. Freedom of Information (FOI) law is being reviewed again, ans the signals are not good. There is a tendency for new FOI laws to be…
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Insidious, Invidious Covidious
This article first appeared in Village magazine, September 2021 edition Covid inspired an appetite for quality media but they then bored people It used to be said that no ministerial career could survive three Sundays in a row on the front pages of the national newspapers. Any story so big that it could sustain public…
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Watching the Media
This article first appeared in Village magazine, July 2021 edition For many years, a regular feature of the American legislative process was what came to be known as the Christmas Tree Bill. Every year or so, a seemingly innocuous bill, unlikely to attract too much controversy or opposition no matter who held power in either…
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Media Commission presages renaissance, or wake
This article first appeared in Village magazine, February 2021 edition The first submissions to the Commission on the Future of Media in Ireland suggest that, while everyone involved in journalism knows what the problems are, nobody has any new solutions. The internet has been eating away at print revenues for years, as both circulation and…
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The case of Danny McCormack
This article first appeared in Village magazine, February 2021 edition The brother of a Tullamore man who died of a heart attack shortly after being released from Garda custody in 2019 has criticised the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) for a lack of transparency and openness in their dealings with the family during the subsequent…
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Is podcasting about to take its next Great Leap Forward?
The article first appeared in Village magazine, July-August 2018 edition Anyone using the Google mobile search app to look for a podcast on an android phone in the last month will have noticed something interesting happening. In addition to the usual links to relevant websites or iTunes directories, Google presents direct links to the most…
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Halt the embargo
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, June 2018 edition Can you determine what the following news reports all have in common? * Eoghan Murphy, Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government announced that Orders have been made directing that bye-elections be held to fill the vacancies in the Seanad caused…
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#RepealThe8th: Oldies get it wrong again
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, June 2018 edition You should stop reading right now. Pay no attention to pretty much every columnist of my generation. We got it wrong. Opinion polls are only as good as the people who interpret them, and we all filter our interpretations though our…
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End of an Era at Examiner
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, December 2017 edition The proposed Irish Times buyout of Landmark Media, owner of the Irish examiner and several other titles, as well as regional radio station shares, comes as little surprise, having been well flagged for several months. If anything, the surprise is it…
