Monday, September 17, 2007

INSIDE POLITICS - SINDO and BERTIE

The Sunday Independent's coverage this weekend of Bertie's woes at the Mahon Tribunal was staggering. It allowed its second favourite politician (Willie O'Dea) hectares of newspaper space to mount a propaganda counter-attack on behalf of its favourite politician (no guesses there).

No matter how weighty the evidence is against the Anorak, the paper's take is that s a conspiracy cooked up by the Tribunal, or by the lefty-liberal Cosa Nostra in the media, or by sinister anti-FF forces. And of course, the paper employs its typical swarm tactic, led by Bombastic Harris, to hammer home its point. Subtle it is not. But it is effective. And just like New Labour made sure it looked after the Sun and its political editor Trevor Kavanagh (as well as his ultimate boss, the Dirty Digger), Fianna Fail look after the Sindo.

FF backroom people whinged throughout the election campaign about the media having an anti-FF bias. Brian Cowen even wrote a learned thesis on it. But what he forgot to mention the equally powerful counter-pull - the Sindo's blatant and unashamed support for Bertie and for FF.

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