Shell Spin from the Irish Times

mayo | environment | other press

Monday May 18, 2009 00:56

by IT reader

Murtagh missing Myers

Does Peter Murtagh have a relationship with the PR department of Shell? Do Conor Lally's "security cources" wear blue uniforms? Why has no one been charged with the break in on the Shell compound where someone supposedly started a digger and tore down a fence? Did anyone take a picture of this attack? Why did the security guards run away? How is that the security guard with the injured arm has never been named nor photographed?

It's all very interesting and will maybe some day be cleared up. But not by reading the reading the Irish Times sadly, which today published the following two articles by their "Crime" correspondent Conor Lally, and their mid life crisis correspondent, Peter Murtagh.

SOLITIARE MIGHT RETURN AFTER LOCAL AND EUROPEAN ELECTIONS

A SHIP that will lay the underwater pipeline for Shell EP Ireland’s controversial Corrib gas project in Co Mayo is due to recommence work there within a month.

Gardaí are planning a major security operation to ensure the ship’s work is not interrupted by protesters. Security sources have told The Irish Times that while the policing plans are still being formulated, the Garda is expected to seek assistance from the Naval Service in protecting the Solitaire pipe-laying vessel.

The Navy’s ships are expected to patrol Broadhaven Bay, near Belmullet, in an attempt to deter protesters from paddling up the Solitaire and disrupting its work, as they did last year.

The Solitaire was damaged last September as work began laying the pipeline from the Corrib gas fields to the landfall site at Glengad beach near Belmullet. A 100m section of the Solitaire’s pipe-laying apparatus, known as “the stinger”, became detached in high winds and heavy swell.

The work was abandoned for the winter in mid-September but not before protesters in kayaks repeatedly clashed with gardaí patrolling the bay in small vessels. Naval vessels were also drafted in to patrol the area.

Tensions between locals and the Garda and Shell’s private security staff were heightened when one local protester, Maura Harrington, went on hunger strike. The 55-year-old retired school teacher called off her action when the Solitaire was forced to leave Irish waters for repairs.

The 300-metre Solitaire, the largest pipe-laying vessel in the world, is due back in Co Mayo as early as the second week in June. However, that arrival date is provisional because the vessel will only be able to lay the underwater pipeline if weather conditions permit.

The vessel’s arrival is likely to result in further protests in the area. Gardaí believe that, like last year, the ship’s presence will attract protesters from the UK and mainland Europe.

Recent protests at the Glengad landfall site have become increasingly robust. Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy visited Belmullet Garda station last week to address gardaí there. Sources said he told those present that while people opposed to the project had a right to protest, local gardaí had his support and the support of the public in keeping those protests within the law. Mr Murphy was in Mayo to attend the funeral of Garda Terry Devers, who was killed in a road collision while travelling to work in Belmullet last Sunday morning. Local teenager Stephen Conway, who was driving the other vehicle, was also killed.

Three weeks ago trouble flared almost immediately Shell began works at the landfall site in Glengad after the winter break.

Gardaí said on April 22nd about 15 masked men carrying chains and iron bars gained access to the construction site. One of the men started a digger and used it to damage the site’s perimeter fence.

One security worker sustained an arm injury before he and has colleagues fled the site.

A number of hours later protester Willie Corduff was hospitalised after he was removed from the site, where he had climbed under the wheels of a lorry to prevent it from being used.

Mr Corduff said he had been held down and beaten by a group of men after he emerged from under the lorry to stretch his legs.

Last weekend seven protesters were arrested and charged after attempts were made to pull down fencing. Protesters believe the State has negotiated a poor deal that will benefit Shell with little benefit for the public coffers.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0518/1....html

SCRUTINISING CLAIMS OF VICIOUS ATTACK

A LETTER written to this newspaper posed an interesting question last week. “Are any of the nation’s newspapers curious about what actually happened in Rossport the night Willie Corduff was hospitalised?” asked the writer.

It’s an important question because in the past week what allegedly happened has been transmuted into bald fact without qualification by those leading the charge.

According to the Shell to Sea protest group, Corduff was subjected to a “vicious and brutal attack”, a “severe beating by masked men” who “beat him viciously about the head and knees” with the result that he had to be hospitalised.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Corduff was “physically attacked, under cover of darkness, by the agents of a multinational corporation, resulting in his being hospitalised and left severely hurt and traumatised”.

The singer Christy Moore told listeners to RTÉ Radio 1 last week that Corduff was “very badly beaten up by security men”.

So what did happen?

Willie Corduff is a prominent member of Shell to Sea whose protest turned nasty one day last month. Shell erected fencing near the foreshore at Glengad in preparation for eventual pipe laying. (An oral planning hearing on this is due to begin this week.)

Mayo County Council says the fencing does not need planning permission, unlike the pipe. Protesters disagree and a group broke into the fenced-off area on April 22nd, commandeered digging machinery and smashed the fence.

At around the same time, Willie Corduff sought to stop a lorry delivering to the fenced-off area by getting under the wheels of the truck. A standoff ensued but in the early hours of April 23rd, Corduff was no longer under the lorry, an ambulance was called and he was taken to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar. According to Shell to Sea, members of a “Shell security force . . . wearing balaclavas moved in to forcibly remove him”.

An unnamed resident was quoted saying Corduff was kicked and hit “with large batons” and “forcibly removed by the masked Shell security into an adjacent field where he was then knocked to the ground, kicked and beaten”. Corduff said: “I thought they were trying to kill me. They beat me until I stopped moving. I heard one of them say, ‘Stop now lads, he’s nearly finished’.”

A different version of events – from Shell sources – has it that, after some 18 hours under the truck, Corduff got out to stretch his legs and have a pee. At which point he was grabbed by security men, restrained and taken to hospital by an ambulance they called. There is support for some of this version from an unlikely source: the website indymedia.ie which supports the protesters. It asserts Corduff “had briefly gotten out from under the truck to stretch his legs”.

Peter Wilcock, a Sligo-based photographer who regards Corduff as a “man of intense integrity and honesty”, took a picture of him in his hospital bed. It was published by the Mayo News. Despite a vicious beating about his head and knees by men wielding “large batons” there are no signs of injury.

“His injuries were not visible,” Wilcock told me, “he says that of course they made sure they hit him where it would not show.”

I asked Shell to Sea last Wednesday whether Corduff would detail his injuries and publish his hospital records to confirm his medical condition on admission. The request was acknowledged but I have yet to obtain the information.

So. Was Willie Corduff “very badly beaten up” as Christy Moore and others claim?

Manuela Riedo was “very badly beaten up” before being raped and murdered. Women in abusive relationships are often “very badly beaten up”. Gay men the world over are not infrequently “very badly beaten up” by violent homophobes. Alleged social delinquents in Northern Ireland, or on sink estates in the Republic, are occasionally “very badly beaten up” by self-appointed republican enforcers. Brave journalists in places like Russia are sometimes “very badly beaten up” and worse by mafia thugs or friends of the politically powerful. Dissenters in dictatorships are often “very badly beaten up”.

But Willie Corduff “very badly beaten up” by Shell’s mercenary thugs? I don’t know because I wasn’t there and I’ve yet to see supporting evidence. But that won’t deter some people pronouncing it as fact.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0518/1....html

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Comments (13 of 13)

Murtagh

by Juno

Mon May 18, 2009 12:54

This is the second column Peter Murtagh's done on Shell to Sea and Bellanaboy and while the first was a barely disguised poof piece for Shell, this one is a reasonable piece of journalism.

He asks two legitimate questions. What evidence is there that Willie Corduff was badly beaten up and what evidence is there that Shell security did it?

He claims that he approached Shell to Sea for evidence almost a week ago and never got any. If that's true, then the fault lies with Shell to Sea for not providing it. He spoke to a photographer who took shots of Willie Corduff published in the Mayo News who says there aren't visible injuries. The only evidence Shell to Sea have of this is Willie's statement and an unnamed resident. Assuming he's truthful in that professionally speaking, he gave Shell to Sea every chance to put its side of the story out.

Just to be clear, I support the Shell to Sea campaign 100%. I believe Willie was assaulted that night. But sometimes journalists write crap about campaigns because they're biased and sometimes they do it because the campaign fails to get its point across. And sometimes both. Automatically assuming a bad piece is because of bias or spin means that campaigners don't examine what they could or should have done differently to present their side of the story.

Not journalism just trash

by Topper

Mon May 18, 2009 13:29

No, it's not in any sense a good or ethical piece of journalism. Murtagh claims that he asked for information and wasn't provided with it. Given his track record of publishing deliberate falsehoods and slanderous attacks, and refusing to carry right-to-reply articles, I wouldn't take his claims at face value.

I think it is quite possible that he is either lying (he didn't ask for the information at all) or that he made his request in a deliberately provocative and aggressive manner so that he could say he didn't get any response (after his previous hack-job, not many people in the Rossport campaign could be expected to bust a gut trying to help him write another one).

His bias oozes from every paragraph of this article - just consider his pitiful attempt to claim that the Indymedia report backs up claims made by Shell, when it does nothing of the sort. He asks why the photos do not show visible evidence of Willie Corduff's injuries, without considering for a moment the well-known fact that cops and private security guards have plenty of experience in giving people beatings without leaving visible bruise marks - they know how and where to hit people so that it will hurt them badly without leaving a mark.

This article is not journalism, it's shameless propaganda. Murtagh helped create the climate in which Willie Corduff could be savagely assaulted with his previous article, now he is trying to cover up the attack. His second last paragraph really gives the game away, as he starts making irrelevant comments about rape victims and Russian journalists being victims of assault - he's desperately trying to pad out his column with material that he thinks will discredit Willie Corduff's story, but by this point he's run out of road so he has to talk about things that are completely unconnected.

You can tell why he found it necessary to write this bilge in the early part of the article, and if you look at the piece by Conor Lally elsewhere in the Irish Times. Murtagh quotes Desmond Tutu and Christy Moore - he's obviously fuming that two high-profile individuals have broken through the media blackout and condemned the assault, bringing it to public attention. In Lally's piece, he quotes Willie Corduff's version of events - he only quotes Corduff after giving the Garda / Shell version first, and the rest of the piece is setting up the Shell 2 Sea campaign as a "law and order" issue, not a political campaign (why is the article written by the crime correspondent, not the environmental or western correspondents?), but he obviously found it necessary to give Corduff's side of the story (he left it out completely from previous reports).

That shows that the media blackout has been effectively challenged, and Murtagh is obviously very anxious to stamp out honest reporting of what happened. In a way it's hilarious to see the style he adopts in both articles - he talks as if the Rossport campaign has been given wall-to-wall sympathetic coverage in the media, and it's up to brave mavericks like him to ask the tough questions and challenge the consensus. In fact, of course, the campaign has either been ignored or vilified by the Irish media in recent months, and Murtagh is trying to crush any possibility of balanced reporting about what's actually happening. The fact that he's so anxious to do so shows how fragile the Shell/Garda line is, and how important it is for people who support the campaign to keep pressing against the blackout.

What odds will people give me on Peter Murtagh accepting a right-to-reply opinion piece from a supporter of the campaign?

Shell well-spun

by Fred Johnston

Mon May 18, 2009 13:45

I think Peter Murtagh is a solid injection of Right-wing thought into the rather dithering editorial correctness of the Irish Times. So it would be useless to expect him to sympathise with the Shell protestors. I have always thought there was something monumentally dodgy about the entire business of the attack on the Shell site. One hesitates to dredge up a 'Fifth Columnists' theory; but there was a too-eager media primed, it seems, to accept the Gardaí view of what happened and leave it at that. If we had serious investigative journalists left, and not those who are writing articles merely as advance chapters of a book to be plugged on 'The Late-Late Show, ' we could conceivably get to the bottom of this. Let us remember that (1) it is vitally important for Shell interests to paint the protest as led by rough-necks who are 'outsiders' with no local support and, (2) that the protest has been infilitrated (I think the word 'hijacked' has already appeared in print) by extreme Republican elements for their own end. It is similarly important that protest PR work to counteract these ideas. What we DO know is that certain people who worked in Shell's security operation turned out to be (allegedly) not without links to alleged assassination squads in South America - a point that the media, having (some of them) mentioned it fleetingly, are NOT highlighting. But the attack on the Shell site, frankly, has a seriously rotten smell about it. Disinformation is to be expected.

Fair enough

Mon May 18, 2009 14:34

'I think it is quite possible that he is either lying (he didn't ask for the information at all) or that he made his request in a deliberately provocative and aggressive manner so that he could say he didn't get any response (after his previous hack-job, not many people in the Rossport campaign could be expected to bust a gut trying to help him write another one).'

If he is telling lies then that should be easy enough to clear up. Let Shell to Sea state that he is doing so. But there's not really any other excuse. If people don't want to deal with journalists then they shouldn't be doing media for a campaign group. My problem isn't with journalists being aggressive in their questioning of Shell to Sea, because I think the arguments and case are unanswerable, but that they aren't as aggressive with Shell or the Gardaí.

Normally our complaint is that the media don't listen to our side. Here we have a journalist who, absolutely is personally biased, but who tried to put our side in the story and who spoke to a photographer who saw Willie's injuries. If what he's writing is not true, it should be easy enough to clear up but I suspect the opinion editor of a national newspaper is not going to lie in print over his own byline about his own actions when they are so easily checkable.

Not at all

Mon May 18, 2009 15:11

"Here we have a journalist who, absolutely is personally biased, but who tried to put our side in the story"

That's where I can't accept your argument. This is not a journalist who "tried to put our side in the story". He actively set out to discredit Willie Corduff's testimony by any means, fair or foul. Even if you hadn't read his previous article, his bias would be obvious - as I said, he pretends to believe that the Indymedia report backs up Shell's version of events, when anyone can see that it doesn't - and they wouldn't have to read the full report to see that it doesn't back up Shell, he hasn't even managed to find a quote that he can take out of context, the quote he gives clearly says nothing about the credibility of Shell's claims. And his diversionary tactics in the second last paragraph really show up his agenda.

I wouldn't be so sure that Murtagh wouldn't tell a straight out lie. After all, he'd hardly be the first in this field - Shell and the Gardai have been telling lies repeatedly for the last few years, lies that could easily be refuted by a few minutes' or at most a few days' good journalism, and they've hardly ever been challenged. Opinion columnists like Kevin Myers and Eoghan Harris have had an even clearer run for bare-faced lies and incitement to violence against Rossport protesters. Murtagh would hardly look at this background and feel like every word he wrote against the Shell 2 Sea campaign would be carefully scrutinised for accuracy. He determines what gets published on the opinion pages of the IT himself (he's already rejected an article responding to his earlier abuse) and he need hardly fear that the O'Reilly stable will go out batting for Willie Corduff and his supporters.

But I did mention a second possibility, which is perhaps more likely - he fired off a single, deliberately obtuse and provocative email to the Shell 2 Sea campaign, hoping that they wouldn't reply, so he could write that in his column. I can't imagine he made any effort to contact Willie Corduff himself and pose any of the questions he raises in the article - he wouldn't want to have to publish a quote from Corduff describing exactly how he was beaten and how much care the thugs took to assault him in a way that wouldn't leave visible injuries on his face. Murtagh could have strolled along to the event last night and heard Corduff's testimony if he wanted - I'll bet you all the grass in Mayo he didn't show his face anywhere near it.

If Peter Murtagh didn't get his hands on evidence of the assault on Willie Corduff, it was because he didn't want to get his hands on it. He helped create the climate in which the assault could take place, now he is trying to cover it up. Pure gutter "journalism", without which state and corporate brutality could not happen so easily.

S B P "Thuggish elements.."

by Jmaes Kelly

Mon May 18, 2009 16:54

The Sunday Business Post editorial, May 17, vented some of it's spleen against "thuggish elements" who "have attached themselves to the protests.." while in the preceding paragraph it stated that Shell has "clearly gone to considerable efforts to meet local concerns in relation to safety and routing."

While no one expects a business paper to bat for the community, the above does speak volumes as to corporate media concern for any semblance of balance in reporting when monied interests are sitting on the other end of the scales.

We can expect more of this from state and corporate media.

Advertising the websites has never been more vital.

Sir

by tis i - noland

Fri Jul 24, 2009 11:11

What would happen if an ordinary citizen made a statement like this .?

“I hate to criticise a multinational, because generally speaking I am a great fan of multinationals (they being the basis of our present prosperity) but I have to say that Shell has been scandalously remiss in not employing someone to bump off a few of these fellows.” [Kevin Myers, Irish Independent, Friday 3rd August 2007]
He would be made to answer in court for it.

Re: Sir

by T

Fri Jul 24, 2009 12:33

What would happen if an ordinary citizen said this? Well given it is a pro-corporate statement maybe not too much, but if it was the other way around, then their home would be raided by heavily armed police and it would be all over the news, radio and the six o'clock news and the person would be branded a terrorist. Then we would have a series of interviews with top level politicians denouncing the statement and telling us how the courts are going to deal with this in a very serious way. Not only that, it would then be used to tarnish an entire group of people and used as a pretext for further heavy handed tactics in favour of accomodating the theft of our resources

IT lurch to the right

by Mayoman

Sat Jul 25, 2009 17:12

Continues in todays paper with a bought in American piece targeting Chavez. Another example of lazy journalism by the Times given that the entire piece consists of quotes from Venzuela's wealthy right-wing opposition. Some cheek too slagging off elements of the media over there who support Chavez given the unquestioning coporate media that appears to rule the roost in this country which explains why the irish public were and continue to be so misinformed about the Irish corporate estaiblishment which has brought this country to its knees financially, socially etc..

PS: As for Peter Murtagh, he's obviously auditioning to join Myarse @ O 'Reillys evil empire.

What it says or shouldnt' say in the papers

Mon Jul 27, 2009 13:12

087.2178138

Alas, I think the day of journalism untied to Big Interests is gone and in a small country such as Ireland we can see it perhaps more readily. Increasingly, the function of our national daily papers is to maintain the status quo, and this applies as much to Shell's activities as it does to cultural and other activities, such as the now-permanent presence of the US military at Shannon, which issue appears to have vanished from news pages altogether. It is increasingly important, therefore, that platforms such as Indymedia are reserved for cogent debate around these issues as a sort of bulwark against bigger media encroachment. Has anyone ever considered setting up a news-sheet (I don't suggest an expensive newspaper) which could be distributed even on-line to act as a sort of propaganda buffer? I know there are publications doing their best, but I'm thinking of something not directly Party-affiliated.

Good idea

by Mayomen

Mon Jul 27, 2009 14:51

There is alot of merit to your suggestion Fred. I actually blame the media as much as the politicians and the bankers for the current mess were in since they were and continue to be cheerleaders for all types of crony capitalism that is the bedrock of the rotten Irish estaiblishment. They are also one of the main reasons why the irish public are one of the most apathetic group of people in the world due to a daily diet of misinformation, lies and spin from the main print and broadcast media in this country.

I agree. . . .

Mon Jul 27, 2009 15:09

Couldn't agree more, but what, information-wise, may be done?

Spread the info seeds.

by Anon

Mon Jul 27, 2009 21:22

One does see stickers on the streets advertising websites eg the gas give away issue , that should be expanded and widened it is quite simple, it is not rocket science.

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Comments (13 of 13)