The media is consciously covering up Helen McEntee’s ineptitude

On Tuesday evening, Gript Media posted online, without any comment or editorialising, a five minute video of an exchange between Helen McEntee, the Minister for Justice, and Michael McNamara, the independent TD for Clare (and as of now, EU election candidate for Ireland South):

Michael McNamara TD grills Justice Minister Helen McEntee on asylum seeker returns:

"The other country accepted responsibility, accepted they would take them back, a decision was made to transfer them, and you transferred 3 of those 188 [asylum seekers]. Where's the problem?" pic.twitter.com/W20i8kNxKX

— gript (@griptmedia) April 23, 2024

At the time of writing, at Wednesday lunchtime, the video has accumulated 420,000 views on our twitter account alone. A separate version, shared by Deputy McNamara himself, has accumulated a further 52,000. How twitter counts “views” is opaque, so we cannot be certain that each of those views is a separate person. That said, even assuming that only half of those views account for distinct people, that’s an audience of over 200,000 – roughly comparable to the number of households tuning into the Late Late Show these days.

The video’s popularity is not hard to understand: It is one of the most blatant displays of ineptitude and incompetence by an Irish cabinet Minister to have been recorded in years. The Minister at times seems to struggle to understand basic questions. Those she does understand, she cannot answer. Those she can answer, the answers are mind-bogglingly weak. The exchange reveals, in glaring fashion, the extent to which Irish immigration policy is not only failing to cope with the immigration crisis, but is failing even to apply established immigration law dating to a time from well before the crisis.

Despite that, at the time of writing, neither the video nor any comment on it has appeared in any national newspaper, or been referred to in a more than passing fashion by the national broadcaster – which is established and funded to keep Irish people abreast of matters of public interest in their own country. The most we got was, in a brief segment on the News at One, Bryan Dobson half-heartedly re-stating a few of McNamara’s questions. As of Thursday morning, the main RTE story on the committee hearing doesn’t even reference the exchange.

The rationale for RTE has never been hard to understand: The theory behind the television licence and the existence of Montrose is that were public affairs in Ireland left up to private media companies (or worse, British media companies), then matters of public interest in Ireland would go un-reported-on, because it would not be in the commercial interests of private companies to invest the time in covering them. Without RTE, in other words, Irish people might be left in the dark about events in their own country.

But of course, in practice, the opposite is true: With RTE, you are left in the dark about events in your own country.

In the case of the McEntee/McNamara exchange, the rationale cannot be that there is no public interest: Indeed, the reaction to and engagement with Gript Media’s fairly bare-bones coverage of the exchange demonstrates beyond any doubt that the “public interest” is substantial. Yet, at the time of writing, the sole RTE report on the committee meeting contains no reference, of any kind, to the Minister’s exchange with Deputy McNamara.

It goes without saying that RTE reporters and editors are not blind. It further goes without saying that they are well aware of the public interest and reaction to the Minister’s exchange with McNamara. Indeed, on multiple occasions over the years I’ve been in this job, RTE reporters have reached out for clarification or comment in relation to some story or other covered by this website. Further, we know, because RTE did produce a report on the committee meeting, that their reporters witnessed the events in question. All of which means that their decision to ignore the McEntee/McNamara exchange cannot be explained by ignorance.

It can only be explained by choice. They have chosen, as a matter of editorial policy, not to show this exchange to the public, or to report on it in any way.

Now, RTE, and indeed the rest of the media, are perfectly capable of deciding that editorial choices by publications are newsworthy and worthy of comment: Back in November, when this publication chose to report the fact that the suspect (now accused person) in a Dublin stabbing incident was of Algerian origin, that choice prompted much media commentary, including accusations from journalists that Gript Media was inflaming tensions by reporting certain facts.

We have established, then, that the motives of journalists can be questioned, when it comes to covering the decisions that they make.

So what could the motive be for not covering this exchange between the Minister for Justice and a highly qualified independent TD on an issue of grave public interest? There are few logical explanations that do not include the possibility that the media at large is seeking to protect the Minister from public scrutiny of her performance.

This has wider implications: The Minister is not only responsible for her own brief. She is also emblematic of the decision making of our new Taoiseach and his Government: It was he, just a week or so ago, who positively chose to leave her in position when many in his own party were urging him to make a change. Her performance, then, reflects on the Taoiseach as much as it does on she herself.

Not coincidentally, it must be suspected, the new Taoiseach has pledged to sort the issue of RTE funding before the next election. Keeping the Government stable is, then, rationally and objectively, in the interests of the national broadcaster.

There is an obvious conclusion to draw here about the reasons why this story is not being covered elsewhere. And there is an obvious question, on foot of that, to ask about whether “public service broadcasting” is a real thing, or is, in fact, an obnoxious and blatant lie. In this case, we’re looking at something much more akin to Government service broadcasting.

It is not the first time. Nor, sadly, will it be the last.