Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Anti-Austerity Alliance will be supporting this Bill on media ownership. We believe the concentration of media in the hands of a small number of rich, ideologically driven people has been the trend in this country since the foundation of the State and before it. The example springs to mind of Mr. William Martin Murphy, who begged for the blood of Mr. James Connolly in the Irish Independent, and Mr. Eamon de Valera, who launched the Irish Pressas a vehicle for the Fianna Fáil Party. We now have Mr. Denis O'Brien, with a majority share in Independent News and Media, INM, after wresting it from the hands of the former billionaire, Mr. Tony O'Reilly, trying to purchase Celtic Media. Another billionaire, Mr. Rupert Murdoch, recently increased Newscorp's stake in the Irish media with the purchase of a number of radio stations to sit alongside his newspapers.

Reports conducted by the European University Institute have ranked Ireland as having a high risk to media freedom, measured at 74%, because of concentration of ownership. They claim, correctly, a lack of media plurality, which is put at 54%. The position was summed up well by the socialist, Leon Trotsky, who spoke of the division of labour among the owners of the press. The gutter press told lies nine times out of ten and the quality press told the truth nine times out of ten to make the lie more effective. Despite the battles between the billionaires to own more of the media, one factor unites all their titles, which is a hatred of the left and the working class if it threatens their interests.

I can give some examples from recent times in this country. On 18 November 2014, the Daily Mailhad the headline of "Democrats who believe in mob rule" after the Jobstown water charge protest, accompanied by pictures of Deputies Ruth Coppinger and Paul Murphy. "Democracy under attack", stated the Sunday Independentthe following week, again after the water charge protests. The media latched on to the peaceful sit-down protest in Jobstown, with quotes like "Pure thuggery", "mob rule", "fascist intimidation led by people with no interest in democracy", "a violent element hijacked the protest" and "hooligans". All these were an attempt to damage and divide the biggest working class movement in decades on the issue of the water charges and ensure those charges stuck.

In recent weeks, right-wing ideologues like Mr. David Quinn have freely denounced Deputy Paul Murphy and the Jobstown Not Guilty defendants as having engaged in "street battles". Deputy Murphy and his co-accused have been found guilty in the press before a trial has even occurred. Apparently, in the name of democracy, a climate has been created in which a 17 year old boy could be found guilty of false imprisonment and a major attack on the right to protest could be launched, with a democratically elected Deputy potentially being removed from his position at the behest of a judge. Defendants could face years behind bars for protesting. The Jobstown Not Guilty campaign will ramp up in the next two months before the trial and it will bring out what really happened on the day and at the protest, as distinct from what we are hearing in the millionaire-owned press.

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