Recent weeks have provided evidence for something many of us knew but couldn’t prove. Ireland’s media has a right-wing agenda. First we had UCD’s Julien Mercille, fresh from exposing the Irish media’s role in cheerleading the property bubble, publishing a study showing how the media had been “relentless cheerleaders for austerity”. His study looked at all editorials and opinion articles on the topic of austerity published since 2008 in the … Read More
Benefit Street? Give us a break. Aim yisser anger upwards!
There’s been a lot of talk about Benefits Street. How about Parasite Street instead? A new website is seeking to turn the conversation about scrounging in Britain on its head. Parasite Street shows that state welfare for landlords, bankers, corporations and companies that under pay their staff amount to fifty-four times more than benefit fraud. So, it asks, “shouldn’t our priority be on eliminating subsidies to the rich?” Meanwhile in Ireland, … Read More
So What Happened DCTV? rabble Chats To The Staff
First came the rumours, then the confirmation. When the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland declined to fund several Dublin Community TV applications it may as well have hammered nail into the coffin of the little channel that could over on UPC 802. In this interview, rabble talks to some familiar faces from the station and looks the at ramifications for alternative media. Dublin Community TV seemed to be flying along … Read More
Roma, Racism And Tabloid Policing: Interview With Gary Younge
Younge: “The Roma have much more to fear in Europe from the state and non-Roma communities than non-Roma have ever had to fear from them… This is tabloid journalism followed by tabloid policing.”
Artane: suffer little children
At last night’s ‘rabble Babble’, Conor McCabe spoke about the historic importance of alternative and independent media in Ireland. Much of our society and history has it’s narrative framed by the institutional press, for example the Irish Times, Irish Independent and Irish Press. We have learned in recent years what was not known before, the systematic abuses of tens of thousands of children, mainly poor children, in the religious institutions … Read More
Bottom Half of the Internet is where we belong
rabble is at South Studios in Dublin 8 (it’s gayer than D7 but not as hipster, or something, check the Irish Times). We’re waiting for Rob Manuel (of the inimitable B3ta) and Ed Levin to take the stage. The Spiel for Spiel goes like this – “Racism; typos; filth; spam; ignorance; rage – that’s all the bottom half of the internet is good for, right? Rob Manuel wants … Read More
Live from the frontline
While tweets from the Frontline may have very different connotations in Ireland (think Kenny, Gallagher and a certain unofficial Sinn Féin twitter account) in Palestine it is becoming commonplace to see hashtags from villages, demonstrations or ‘Occupy’-style gatherings trend across the social media. Just today, while our mainstream media pointedly ignores the hunger strikes and solidarity demonstrations across the region, twitter users are documenting the ongoing events at Nabi … Read More
The New Telly Isn’t Like The Old.
Dublin Community TV (DCTV) is proving it’s worth once more with a new series entitled The Live Register. Last night saw the second episode , Life/Choice, broach the difficult topic of abortion in Ireland, or the lack thereof. Through a very sad set of circumstances the programme was broadcast on the same evening that news broke of the death of Savita Halappanavar at University Hospital Galway following three days of extreme … Read More
A Class Act.
Soundmigration has some pertinent questions for the country’s political journo class. He’s got a lengthy enough post over on his blog where he takes a meat cleaver to the Irish Times’ coverage of the IFSC Clearing House Group. Reality maps too closely onto satire it seems. Is this retreat into personality as politics and politics as successive pseudo-entertaining events because current mainstream journalists lack the space to develop their own … Read More
Gombeen #4: Eilis O’Hanlon
You wouldn’t think that Eilis O’Hanlon was bought up in working-class 70s west Belfast, the niece of IRA chief Joe Cahill. Part of a social group that was framed within the same language that she is now using against others.