Are the Irish people idiots who get what they deserve – i.e. whatever they are spoon-fed?

Irish people are from Ireland.
To have an inability to do something is the opposite of having the ability to do it.
Connect four is a game where one tries to get four in a row.
Please sign on the dots and initial here.

If you got what I was trying to say there, congratulations, you might be more intelligent than the average unquestioning member of the Irish public.

Two major news events have bombarded the newspapers, the Internet, television and radio stations over the past month. The first was the investigation of Rupert Murdoch and how disgraceful behavior and practices can run riot when one corporation has too much power, especially when that power is over the world’s most valuable asset – information. It was revealed how much control huge media corporations can possess and how they can essentially ruin your life if they so wish or protect you if that is in their interests. They can help put someone in office or remove them. He who has power over information, it seems, is the effective ruler.
The second thing that happened was that Independent candidate David Norris, withdrew from the presidential campaign, after consistent attacks eventually got the better of him. The final straw, a letter he wrote 15 years ago, dug up by someone who didn’t want him in there and plastered across the various news outlets.

It seems amazing to me that on looking at our closest neighbor and its long overdue confrontation with monopolistic media that we didn’t for one second question ourselves and our own situation. Our situation is in fact worse than the U.K. Our situation is so bad that you won’t even hear how bad it is because there is hardly anybody to report on it, as there is in the United Kingdom.

In this country, if you source national news you almost certain to get it from only two eventual sources, whether it is television, radio, in the newspaper or on one of the main news websites. If you don’t get your news from a radio station, television station or Internet news site run by RTE(Radio 1, 2fm, RTE1, RTE2 and TG4, rte.ie etc), our national broadcaster, you almost certainly get it from a paper, Internet site or radio station owned in part or in full by one man – Denis O’Brien.

Yes, Denis O’Brien’s company Communicorp Group Ltd owns Newstalk, Today FM, 98FM(now called Dublin’s 98), Spin 1038 and Spin South West(42 stations in total across Europe) and Denis is a leading shareholder in Independent News & Media(with Tony O’Reilly) which owns the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Evening Herald the Irish Daily Star as well as 14 regional papers, two free newspapers and a magazine as well as independent.ie. It also owns the Sunday Tribune and a myriad of titles and stations worldwide.

So do you want your news from Denis O’Brien or the Government? Without thinking too much about it you might prefer that your news doesn’t come from the Government. So who is this Denis O’Brien character? While at UCD I met Denis O’Brien when he came to my business school (Quinn school of Business) to be awarded an honorary Vice-Presidancy of the UCD Quinn Society.
Estimates put his net worth at between two and four billion dollars. He made his fortune after being gifted the Esat Digifone contract by Michael Lowry. The Moriarty Tribunal found that it was almost beyond doubt that this was due to payments given to Mr Lowry. And where is he now? Well apart from the bribing of ministers, Denis O’Brien has more in common with Rupert Murdoch than you might think. Like Rupert Murdoch, he is not registered for tax here or resident here in the country that gave him his fortune. He is registered in Malta for tax purposes and yet remains one of the most powerful controllers of Irish media.

So when you hear adverts on Newstalk say “News: without the state run spin” you know that it is the Denis O’Brien run spin, a man who bribed his way to billionaire status and left the country to a tax haven yet still controls the media and therefore the power in Ireland.

So hard luck David Norris, you never stood a chance. Until the media in Ireland is in the hands of more than just a tiny elite the future of every citizen is in the hands of that same tiny elite.