Denis O’Brien, top, and Dr Julien Mercille, above
He’s redacted everyone.
EVERYONE!
But NOBODY gags Julien Mercille.
(unless you ask his permission first and use the ‘secret’ word)
Dr Mercille writes:
Last week in the Dáil, Catherine Murphy TD talked about Denis O’Brien and his dealings with IBRC. What she said is obviously of public interest, because the State owns the bank, and we’re thus entitled to know how it is dealing with its customers.
Ms Murphy said a couple of interesting things:
-IBRC apparently made loans to Denis O’Brien on favourable terms, like charging him an interest rate of 1.25% when IBRC could have charged 7.5%. If true, this means a significant loss for IBRC, because we’re talking about loans of up to €500 million.
-The former CEO of IBRC apparently made a verbal agreement with Denis O’Brien to allow him to extend the terms of his expired loans. This verbal agreement never went through the credit committee for approval.
These statements were published on the parliament’s website, so anybody can read them there.
But Denis O’Brien is not happy with the statements being circulated, so he’s now claiming that no media outlet can report them because he has a court judgment (injunction) that says so. But we don’t even know what this court judgment says, because it hasn’t been released.
Nevertheless, most media outlets in the country have chosen not to publish Catherine Murphy’s statements for the moment. They will now ask the courts this week if it’s OK to do so.
The legal issue seems to boil down to this: normally, the Irish Constitution (Article 15.12) allows the media to publish whatever is said in the parliament. But now, there is this court injunction in favour of Denis O’Brien that says the opposite. In short, the issue is: Who has priority, Ireland’s Constitution, or Denis O’Brien? Lawyers will argue over this one and we might know the outcome of their debates in the next few days.
A few points are worth bearing in mind to contextualize the whole controversy.
First, it all goes back to inequality. Ireland is an unequal country. Before anybody denies this, just pick up a copy of the 2015 Irish Rich List, and you tell me if there’s equality in this country. In fact, income inequality has risen in most nations over the last several decades, a result of right-wing economic policies.
Inequality means that a minority of powerful people have significant control over others’ lives. So to prevent this type of scandal from erupting again, we need to reduce inequality.
Second, and related, Ireland’s inequality is reflected in its concentration of media ownership and the lack of a strong alternative press. The situation now is that the owner of the bulk of Ireland’s media is using the courts to prevent the whole media from reporting on his affairs. If Denis O’Brien controlled just a tiny bit of the Irish media, and if nobody controlled more than a tiny bit of Ireland’s media, power would be more dispersed and it would be more difficult for one tycoon to determine much of what we read, hear and watch on TV.
We also need to strengthen the alternative media that prints progressive news stories consistently—and no, that’s not Facebook or Twitter.
Third, the hypocrisy of the mass media should be noted. The media has systematically supported the interests of the rich and powerful. For example, it has cheered on the bank guarantee that made citizens responsible for banks’ liabilities; it has consistently called for austerity even though it doesn’t revive economies in a downturn; it doesn’t talk seriously and to the extent needed about a range of issues like poverty and deprivation, payments to bank bondholders, how a public health care system is the best option, how Podemos and Syriza are rising in Spain and Greece, etc. (I give more details on this in my book on the media’s coverage of the economic crisis, which is now available for free in pdf here)
However, it would not be hard to report the work of those who have looked into this issue. For example, when is the last time you saw the media discussing the work of Michael Taft, the economist of the union Unite, who writes excellent economic analysis at his Notes On The Front website? Why don’t we hear more about the findings of the Nevin Institute or Tasc? Those are arguably the best sources of economic analysis in the country, but the media mostly ignores them.
In short, the mainstream media should be supported in its attempt to report on Catherine Murphy’s statements, but should also be reminded that it is in large part responsible for setting the conditions allowing the powerful to control so much of what goes on in this country.
@JulienMercille is lecturer at UCD and the author of The Political Economy and Media Coverage of the European Economic Crisis: The Case of Ireland (2015, Routledge). His new book, Europe’s Treasure Ireland (Palgrave), will be out in July 2015.
