Fidelma Healy-Memes - Village Magazine

46 April 2015

MEDIA Fidelma Healy-Eames

F one story last month illustrated

how far Irish media have to go in

adapting to the speed at which sto-

ries develop online, it was the latest

gaﬀe by Galway-based Fine Gael sena-

tor Fidelma Healy-Eames.

Healy-Eames does not have a good

record when it comes to the internet.

So error prone has the she become, she

is known online as Healy-Memes for

her ability to reliably generate regular

snafus. The senator, who has a doctor-

ate and looks like a politician, joined the

Reform Alliance though not its ultimate

incarnation, Renua.

She infamously was ﬁned for allegedly

being obstreperous with a ticket collec-

tor on the Galway-Dublin train when

she was found without a ticket in July

2012, 10 days after her Merc was seized

for failure to display a tax disc; and for

refusing to pay €12,000 to a plumber

for renovations to her home – some-

thing “implausible” about the jacuzzi

being too big.

Anyway… in January, she reacted to

Leo Varadkar’s coming out interview

with Miriam O’Callaghan by wishing

him well, ending her tweet with a bizarre

#sexualorientation hashtag. The choice

was mocked for the rest of the day, with

tweets such as “Just taking the bins out

#sexualorientation”.

On Mothers Day, Healy-Eames took to

twitter to wish a “Happy Mother’s Day

to all”, before continuing by noting:

“Hope we can continue to celebrate it

after #SSM (same-sex marriage) passed.

In some US states Mothers and Fathers

day banned. #pcgonemad”.

Online, the tweet was quickly mocked

and fact-checked, and “some US states”

soon turned out to be isolated incidents

in two schools, one in New York, the

other in Nova Scotia, a decade apart and,

in both cases, pre-dating any same-sex

marriage laws.

The Senator d idn ’t help her case du ri ng

her climb-down several hours later by

posting a link to one of the stories at a

website with a noted anti-Semitic bent

which also sells, among other things,

magic pills which claim to oﬀer protec-

tion against ocean-borne Fukushima

radiation.

Following the Mother’s Day faux-pas,

the Journal fact-checked the claim, even

as several twitter accounts did the same

thing. The ﬁrst fact-checked rebuttal

came in their Daily Edge section, 65

minutes after Healy-Eames took to twit-

ter. Later that afternoon, the Journal got

an interview with the senator.

In other words, by the time the

Monday papers were being laid to bed,

the story had run its course. A politician

had made a wild claim, been challenged

on it (and not just by “ordinary” twitter

users but also by several TDs, senators,

journalists and activists), and clariﬁed

her position or backed down, depending

on your point of view.

The tweet from the senator, on a

Sunday morning, was the kind of thing

an enterprising producer on one of the

Sunday morning radio shows might

have run with, either oﬀering it to the

roundtable panel to chew over, or even

trying to get Healy-Eames on the phone

to expand on her position. Granted, ‘The

Marian Finucane Show’, which usually

reports on Twitter and internet items

with the tone of a medieval scribe con-

fronted with a Gutenberg press, was

unlikely to make that call, but neither

did Newstalk or Today FM.

The ﬁrst Irish Times report on the

story isn’t on their website until 9PM

that night, compiled by Michael O’Regan.

Only the ﬁrst three paragraphs of the

story concern the tweet-storm, and they

are followed by two more on the senator’s

relations with Renua, before segueing to

an Atheist Ireland statement on the ref-

erendum campaign. The Healy-Eames

tweet bears all the hallmarks of being

shoehorned into an existing story.

The Irish Examiner didn’t even bother

with an update during the day. The web-

site simply uploaded the report, with all

their stories, at 1am the next morning.

The ﬁrst newspaper to speak to Hea-

ly-Eames, the Irish Independent, quoted

her at length on her voting intentions

but, while the report did state that there

were two school cases, it oddly under-

played the senator’s claim that “some

US states” had banned the holiday. The

blatant untruth is simply skipped over.

The senator was not challenged about

it, or oﬀered an opportunity to explain

if, for example, it was the result of poor

research or a misunderstanding. To

the Indo’s credit, however, its story was

posted two hours after the event, and a

full nine hours before the Irish Times’.

Stories don’t happen in a vacuum.

When the most engaged audience

watches a story unfold online, actively

investigates and debunks it, and then

watches as the “mainstream” media

downplays even as it plays catch-up,

then old-media credibility suﬀers.

It probably didn’t help that the Sen-

ator took to her twitter on a sleepy

Sunday morning, but when statements

are treated less seriously because they

were not made in the august chambers

of Leinster House or on the busy plinth

outside, the audience may wonder

whether it’s worth bothering with the

mainstream.

If newspapers really want to be ‘dig-

ital ﬁrst’, then they have to adapt to be

‘digital serious’ about ‘digital events’,

and report them in something close to

real time. •

An essay in what not to do as a Senator or newspaper. By Gerard Cunningham

Fidelma Healy-Memes

In some US

states Mothers

and Fathers

day banned.

#pcgonemad

“

Fidelma Healy-Eames