PEACE PROTESTER IN CLAIM HAMBURGERS ARE ADDICTIVE CLAIMS SINDO JOURNALIST.

Monday February 03, 2003 04:45

by with the editor

Open letter to Brendan O’Connor.

First of all I want to repeat my sincere thanks for your invaluable work in publicising Indymedia in today’s Sunday Independent. Most other Irish media outlets take great pains to avoid mentioning the website despite the fact that it has fast become an invaluable resource for many journalists wanting to take the temperature of the new left in Ireland. You, single-handedly, have smashed down that particular wall of silence. Long may it continue. Oh and I nearly cracked up when I heard you repeat on Newstalk 106 the line from an Indymedia contributor about you not realising the danger to the brain of eating too many hamburgers. Mad Cowboy Disease indeed.

PEACE PROTESTER IN CLAIM HAMBURGERS ARE ADDICTIVE CLAIMS SINDO JOURNALIST.

Open letter to Brendan O’Connor.

Hello Brendan,

First of all I want to repeat my sincere thanks for your invaluable work in publicising Indymedia in today’s Sunday Independent. Most other Irish media outlets take great pains to avoid mentioning the website despite the fact that it has fast become an invaluable resource for many journalists wanting to take the temperature of the new left in Ireland. You, single-handedly, have smashed down that particular wall of silence. Long may it continue. Oh and I nearly cracked up when I heard you repeat on Newstalk 106 the line from an Indymedia contributor about you not realising the danger to the brain of eating too many hamburgers. Mad Cowboy Disease indeed.

It took me a little while for it to click with me just how you came across the site in the week since your first hatchet-job on the Shannon Peace Camp. Then the penny dropped. You saw the handmade piece of Indymedia corporate branding which I personally stuck up on the fence to the right of the Peace Camp caravan. You saw it during your look around the ‘many posters around the camp (which) refer to neutrality’. It is done in black marker and features the slogan ‘Read it, Write it’. From such small acorns . . . .

Unfortunately, due to the storm which blew down my tent in the night before your visit, I wasn’t awake when you called. I could have explained a little about Indymedia to you. I could also have warned Tracy that Sindo Journalists do not call on anyone early in the morning without a serious agenda. I was asleep with three others in the Geodome which you describe as ‘a large tent made from what looks like plastic bags’. I stayed there again for the last few nights with batches of people who have travelled from all over Ireland to support the camp and to spend a night or two monitoring the level of US military use of the airport. The Geodome is still dry and cosy inside and since your early morning call the camp has grown to include a second caravan as well as two immaculate teepees and numerous other more conventional plastic tents.

‘I’ll bet you thought there were hundreds of protesters; in fact there are only three or four at any one time, drawn from a core group of 15’ you state in your article based on your half-hour visit. Pity you didn’t look around a little more. By my count there were eight people present on the morning of your visit. Some were asleep in the aforementioned Geodome due to the effects of the storm of the night before on their sleep. Another separate bunch were enjoying the comforts of the immaculate little house in a working-class estate in Shannon which serves as a backup and a sanctuary for those exposed to the elements at the gate of the airport. This small journalistic inaccuracy on your part is forgiveable. What is not so foregiveable is the overall insinuation that support for the camp is limited to that of a ‘group of 15’. Two days after your visit, and in plenty of time for your print deadline, 2000 + people from all over Ireland including supporters and elected representatives from Sinn Fein, Labour, The Green Party, Fine Gael and the Socialist Party came to protest against US Military use of the airport. This was only the last and the biggest so far in an ongoing series of protests at the airport. You didn’t mention any of them either. That wouldn’t have served your agenda.

‘Here’s another lie’ you continue later, ‘despite what you will have heard from the conspiracy theorists, the viewing area at Shannon Airport is open to anyone who wants to go there.’ Really Brendan? Tell that to John Gormley and the Five Seven Live ladt reporter who were in the Airport in the company of myself, Tim Hourigan and Ed Horgan on the night of the 17th January attempting to observe as a Commercial Aircraft disgorged it’s cargo of hundreds of American Troops. Not only was the viewing area closed but we were harrassed from the moment we entered the terminal building by a group of airport police. I was prevented from filming a Hercules Aircraft which was parked beside a Ryanair Aircraft. I was also prevented from filming the troops as they passed through the airport. As I genuinely believed what was happening in the Airport, and what was happening to us in our attempts to document US Military use of the airport, was of interest to the public, I continued to film the entire episode with my camera held by my side set to wide. You and anyone else who wants to have a look is welcome to get in touch via Indymedia. If you had had any genuine interest in checking the veracity of the claims of the ‘conspiracy theorists’ you would have stuck around, as many journalists have done by now, in the company of the Monitors from the Peace Camp until a troop transport arrived, and then made your way to the terminal and checked access to the viewing gallery when troops are arriving.

‘There is little evidence anywhere for the strong local support claimed by the 15 protesters.’ You like repeating that number, don’t you Brendan? Any journalist with a modicum of a nose for a story would have passed a good laugh on to their readers by recounting the fact that people from the camp have been forced to bring large quantities of food donated to the camp by locals to the offices of local TD’s so that they can donate it to those in need in the area. You could have used your acres of space today to clear up the the misconception you attempted to create about the level of support in the area for the Peace camp by passing on the news to your readers that the Limerick Council of Trade Unions had passed a motion in support of the Peace Camp in the days following the arrest of Mary Kelly. It’s pretty obvious to me that you are not one to let facts get in the way of consistency in your journalistic endeavours.

‘I ask her if it isn’t true that oil is traded as an economic commodity on World markets, regardless of politics, and that America still buys as much oil as it ever did from countries like Iraq’ you say about your conversation with Tracy. I’m unsurprised that she had little interest in conversing with you about the politics of oil at 8.30 on the morning after a storm but I am a little surprised at your ignorance. You after all have longer experience in the ways of the world than Tracy, you are paid to inform your readers and still you insult the intelligence of your readership by trying to pretend that the upcoming conflict, which even Willie O’Dea has admitted is primarily about oil, has nothing to do with black gold. You might have served your readers better if you pointed out that in the past few months the amount of oil that America is buying from Iraq has increased dramatically due to oil supply problems created primarily by the ‘strike of the bosses’ in the Venezualan Oil industry. You might have also pointed out the fact that the Bush Administration have a penchant for mixing up oil and politics in an unprecedented way and the fact that the US’s home produced oil supply is drying up rapidly. Why else would Bush get into a dirty fight with public opinion in the US and Worldwide about drilling in the pristine wilds of Alaska.

You mention a ‘mangy looking dog’. I know the dog you are referring to and it is not in any way mangy looking. That was just a cheap shot that slid out of your fingers onto the screen without much thought besides it being a convenient embellishment for a generalised smear story. You probably remembered and adapted the old ‘hippies with dogs on strings’ buzz from UK newspaper smear stories about their 90’s crop of determined anti-road protesters. Maybe I should borrow the dog and bring it and a Vet to visit your editor so they can adjudicate on it’s manginess. I could take the opportunity to tell your editor about some of the shortcomings of your journalism while we examined the doggie. I could probably also come up with some clever remark about ‘editors with dogs on strings’ before the Vet and editor had finished consulting. Maybe I could also charm him with anecdotes about the Garda dogs and their handlers I have observed and filmed in large numbers policing the many peaceful protests I have attended at Shannon. I could regail him with the tale of the Garda whose dog turned on him when he tried to sic it on a large group of protesters who had shaken down a fence and ‘gone airside’ during a particularly lively session of excercising their democratic rights.

It was actually that incident that marked the beginning of a growth in general public awareness in this little state of ours that there was something out of the ordinary happening at Shannon. Eoin Dubsky made it impossible to ignore with his spot of artistry and Tim Hourigan had the facts at hand when the media finally arrived. Mary did her hatchet job and now everybody knows that Shannon is basically operating as a pseudo- US military air base. 40% of their income is from military flights according to Aer Rianta. Us ‘nutters’ at Indymedia had been covering the story around Shannon Airport since December 2001 and provided an outlet for the monitors at the airport for their findings when no-one else in the mainstream media would give them a hearing. We recently had the pleasure of providing the lazy shower at Prime Time with footage of troops in Desert Camoflage moving through the airport. So much for your doubts about who forced the issue of US military use of the airport onto the agenda and flushed Biffo out of hiding. It was ‘these few kids sitting around the roundabout in the industrial estate’ and their supporters who did it and who dragged public representatives of many shades along in their wake. Who else might have done it Brendan? Surely you don’t believe, as you seem to imply in your article of January 26th, that Biffo woke up one fine January morning and decided to come clean with the citizens of Ireland. It must make you a little sick that these ‘kids’ with their ‘mangy looking dogs’ are doing what authentic journalism is supposed to be about - setting the agenda, informing the public about matters of public concern and forcing the powerful to answer questions - while you do what exactly? I’m racking my brains here and I can’t recall any Irish news story of any importance which you have had anything to do with breaking since your TV career stalled and you took to the Sindo dollar. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t your main talent insulting people and sending them up and isn’t that why you were sent to Shannon. Your editor seems to think people will trust your judgement about these youngsters who are ‘stuck in mud and wooliness’. He probably assumes you have some sort of kudos with the ‘celtic tiger cubs’ who remember you from your days in the ‘yoof tv’ business. You were a laugh for the pre-teens of the country in your priest days. I can’t take that away from you. But if he assumes that gives you some claim to the ‘high priest of obnoxious commentary’ position of Mr. Dunphy in the eyes of the youth market, he is sadly mistaken. A lot of ‘yoof’ watch football but not a lot of ‘yoof’ watched ‘DFTG’.

Ah well. Maybe I should have written you a letter about the above last week. It might have made you hesitate and think a little before you ransacked the Indymedia Ireland website looking for material for another bout of mudslinging. It might have stopped you from libelling one George Harrison from NYC in the course of your ludicrous attempts to portray the array of individuals and groups who are against the use of Shannon Airport by the US Military as being somehow associated en-masse with dissident Republican groups which was delivered today under the banner headline ‘The sinister face of peace activists’. The headline alone makes me puke. It’s a short jump from that to the ‘sinister faces of peace activists’ but one which Brendan goes on to take. Oh I really should have sent him this letter last week. Right in the middle of that short jump is Indymedia’s biggest bit of publicity yet. A piece of publicity that could with care grow into a story. Thanks again Brendan. We are grateful. A contributor laid the bait and you ran growling for it with the latest in a series of unedifying headlines. “Ireland’s ‘conscience’ camps at Shannon”, “Beware of the Bogeymen”. “Why the Grand Old Duke of Bush has to destroy Saddam” and “Micheal D takes another trip on the amazing marginalised’ flying carpet”. The crowning jewel for Willie’s Doktors, (looking to the Sundays for a nice reflection of their ability to control public perception of ‘events’), must have been ‘SHANNON HATCHET ACTIVIST IS FETED BY REPUBLICAN DIEHARDS’. Being from El Paso myself I thought in strictly linguistic terms “DIEHARD REPUBLICANS” would have had a better ring to it but the point was clear. Peace Activists are the new improved ‘Bogeymen’ and there isn’t a war on. What will they be if, conjecturally, after a war starts without the consent of the UN, and in the event of Bertie continuing to allow the airport to be used by the US Military, they continue to protest? It is a possibility and already the words being used when aggregated convey an impression of scaremongering hysteria. It is transparent ‘DIEHARD HATCHET ACTIVIST SINISTER BOGEYMEN BEWARE TRIP FLYING CARPET MUD and, to top it off, in the inverted commas, in the left top corner- ‘CONSCIENCE’. It all seems to be saying to be saying something deeply illogical - that peace protesters are all REPUBLICAN and are all SINISTER and they have no CONSCIENCE.

OH THE BIG LIE IS THE ONE FOR THE HARD ROAD BRENDAN. It’s a short step, and not just semantically, from that misrepresentation to the ‘LOCK EM ALL UP’ school of thought. Will Indymedia get stuck in the middle of that step too Brendan? Will you be the one to take it?

I think I’ll check out what Iosaf has to say about it all in the morrow.

Anyway this was for you Brendan. Hope you liked it. It took me a long time to type. Hope you don’t mind but I’ve CCed it to a few mailing lists. I know a bully when I see one. I’m gonna fade back now into ‘ the free for all of Indymedia ‘where any nutter can pass off what he or she wants as a fact’. Oh and thanks again. I just noticed that you even gave your readers instructions on how to use the site. Actually you seem to have cut and pasted bits of our guidelines into your article. Wow. (Did he actually do that?). You should have called us. We would have helped you out. It’s just as easy to get our number as it is to get yours. Do write back and I’ll write again soon. The publishing business is addictive isn’t it. Shure one of those peace protesters might even go so far as to claim that hamburgers are addictive if you caught them off their guard or ganged up on one of them with your colleagues in intellectual life. Now wouldn’t that make a headline ………

Yours etc

No Name