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, I enjoy the exquisite discomfort
of Fianna Fáil politicians as much as the next
anarcho-communist. But there can rarely have
been a less edifying spectacle than the media
feeding-frenzy this autumn that saw the hun-
gry pack haul its slavering maws from John
O’Donoghue to Mary Coughlan and back again.
Personalising stories of, e.g., administrative
incompetence and political waste, is standard
journalistic practice, and while it’s got to hurt
if you’re the ‘personal’ being -ised, neither of
these politicians deserves anything beyond
the most basic human sympathy. The problem
wasn’t even the media’s odd selection of their
mortal sins: Mary daring to criticise An Bord
Snip Nua – oh dear! – and John-Boy grabbing
a few creature-comforts as he slid down the
political ladder. No, what made this so espe-
cially unedifying was that media audiences in
Ireland have arguably never been in greater
need of genuine edification than over recent
months, as Brian Lenihan put flesh – albeit
putrid, rotting flesh – on the Government’s
NAMA proposal, and a noted right-wing econ-
omist told us, with the imprimatur of the
State, precisely where and how public serv-
ices should be slashed.
Yes, of course the NAMA and McCarthy
stories were covered. The Irish Times, in par-
ticular, rolled out a series of ever-more-tech-
nical articles looking into some of the details
of NAMA, generally with either a pro or anti
slant. As a leftist who (I think not untypi-
cally) allowed my points of attack against
the Establishment to drift slightly away from
economics during the Tiger-time, but who has
made a point (again not untypically) of immers-
ing myself in the dismal science since the glo-
bal financial collapse beckoned in the summer
of , I still felt at sea reading much of this
material (It scarcely needs saying that hardly
any of it was from a clear left-wing perspec-
tive, since we’re presumably beyond expect-
ing any such thing from the Irish Times of this
era.). Moreover, it seemed, oddly enough, that
NAMA was subject to a more clearer debate
before Lenihan’s mid-September explanation
of its details than it was afterward – when the
dimensions (colossal) of the risk (foolhardy)
were actually on display. In place of any clear
explication of the most dangerous commit-
ment of public funds in the history of the State,
the media turned to political bloodsport in
Kildare Street.
Indeed, it took until just a couple of days
before the Green Party was due to vote on
NAMA for the press to wake up to the fact that
the party’s membership was actually going to
try to hold an intelligent debate on the sub-
ject – and that this debate could result in the
fall of the Government. So when, a day before
that planned debate, the newspaper of record
reported that there had been a sudden and
rather dramatic late change in the rules of
NAMA, arising apparently from Green pres-
sure, did its journalists delve into the impli-
cations for the public finances? Did they f***.
Stephen Collins of the Irish Times chronicled
the change as, you know, political bloodsport:
“The Green Party claimed the agreement to
include the levy in the Bill was a major con-
cession, which had been agreed at yester-
day’s Cabinet meeting despite ‘considerable
reluctance’ on the part of the Department of
Finance...Government officials confirmed that
the amendment had been agreed but empha-
sised that the Department of Finance did not
expect Nama to make a loss”.
Now, it’s very likely that as of October th
when this appeared, no-one had sufficient detail
on this amendment to discuss its implications
sensibly. But the casualness of the reporting is
striking, if for no other reason than the sheer
scale of the money involved. How would such a
levy be calculated? For how long would it run?
How big might a levy have to be in order to begin
to cover the potential losses? How would that,
in turn, affect the banks? Wouldn’t the pros-
pect of such a levy give the banks a greater
incentive to pump up another property bub-
ble so that NAMA wouldn’t make a loss? James
Nix highlights a number of dramatic changes
in the premesis for Nama elsewhere in Village
[p.]. In the wake of the
announcement of this
amendment, the major
media didn’t see fit to ask
these questions. Contrast
that with the forensic focus
on relatively petty sums in
relation to the McCarthy
Report and public-service
pay. Indeed, until Joseph
Stiglitz came to town, the
most ‘far-out’ idea to get
anything like a significant hearing in relation to
the public finances was that we might, you know,
stretch out the cuts over a slightly longer period,
this dangerously Marxist (or was it Keynesian?)
notion coming from David Begg of ICTU, among
others. The continuing tyranny, in the media
debate as elsewhere, of neo-liberal ‘principles’
– which have nothing whatsoever to do with the
free market, as the pleas for State bailouts dur-
ing this crisis have demonstrated – has been in
stark contrast to their thorough discrediting
by events in the real world. That the likes of
Colm McCarthy is still asked on the radio, let
alone asked to prescribe a remedy for Ireland’s
finances, reminds us that we have a grotesquely
mis-shapen ‘public sphere’.
“…the casualness of the
reporting is striking if for no
other reason than the sheer
scale of the money involved”
Harry Browne
village_oct_09.indd 7 27/10/2009 15:37:30
