Irish Independent: Voodoo Reporting

                                                           The flying donkey

It would not be a surprise that more than a few staff at the Irish Independent have dolls that look like Gerry Adams and Martin Mc Guinness so they can prep themselves up each day to stick a few more needles, in the form of gutter journalism, at them. Today is no different.

They wheeled out the blow hard John Bruton and Kevin Daly to throw a few rocks. Daly works for Sachs and used his position to warn us that that Sinn Fein represent the greatest threat to growth in this country. Correct that: He did not say that but the Independent implied that he did. Have they forgotten who landed this country into the greatest financial mess ever since the Normans arrived.

Bruton, who once famously said, “Fuck the peace process” because he was tired of hearing about it during his short time in office and wanted people instead to listen to his dull and nothingness waffle never left character. But all of this is tame stuff of course compared to Monday’s rubbish about Sinn Fein, which was still a lot less hateful than previous poison pills.This time it was about the ‘Secret document’ and heralded their piece with this: Sinn Fein embroiled in fresh sex abuse allegations. The article is wrapped around this secret document that is not a secret at all in the first place.

The origins of the document are a secret of course because the Independent decided it should be so. The reality is more like that they created it themselves now that Maria Cahill is being exposed as someone that has issues with the truth and what allegation she needs to run with that just might stick. One thing is for sure, she will never be the Joan Of Arc for the genuinely abused whatever she chooses to do next. 

They called the contents of the secret document ‘shocking’ and this time the rape ‘victim’ therein had dropped a few years in age and now is only thirteen years old. Then the Independent claimed that the secret document was raised in the Dail and the house of commons but offered no proof of that. The serial abuser horror character apparently was being moved around the country to safe houses in order that he could go on happily and safely abusing. At this point in the article I could hardly stop laughing as I pondered did this newspaper really believe their own lies. It seems the IRA were more a group of paedophiles than men fighting loyalist murderers as there were a a hundred of them for sure doing it. The number itself gave the game away as it is too rounded a figure to be anything else but voodooism.

This voodoo reporting is old style and from a time when people allowed themselves to believe that if it was in the Irish Independent it must be true. 

A man in New York told me once that a great big bird with a twenty foot wingspan swooped down on a donkey of mature years in a small village in Ugasstan in Russia and carried it away for dinner. I asked him how did he know it was true. He replied that it was in the newspaper. I duly looked at it. Sure enough there was a drawing of a bird flying high in the sky with a donkey. The well researched article got the horrific details from an informed source that wished to remain anonymous who gave them a secret document filling in the blanks of this truly horrific 'true' story.

Barry Clifford