Blurred Keys

Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris left a Today FM studio yesterday (Saturday) when Matt Cooper allowed Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times to get his point across uninterrupted .

Cooper asked Harris to stop a number of times before O’Toole says “It is impossible to engage in a debate with somebody whose
only interest is in shouting”.

Further interruption followed, prompting Cooper again twice requesting silence "Please let Fintan talk", to this Harris says "I tell you what, I have enough of  Fintan O’Toole and the Irish Times", and leaves.

Audio: (WMP/Windows Media Player format) http://audio.todayfm.com/files/HARRIS-1.wma (Link vie here)

The opposition receive more coverage then the government in the run up to the Irish general election according to a RTÉ.ie / Dow Jones’ Factiva media tracker. The tracker data backs claims that Fianna Fáil made just days before the election.

"At our press conferences, people were coming in quite hostile against
my ministers" Taoiseach Bertie Ahern claimed, "No matter what Fianna Fáil said, they were coming like rocks at us".

Looking at the same trend for Irish media only, shows an insignificant spike on that day while Fine Gael was the clear winner…

This shows how much coverage each individual leader has received since the start of the campaign. As you can see, Enda Kenny has dominated the coverage since Fianna Fáil’s manifesto launch with Pat Rabbitte even outpacing Bertie Ahern on most days….

Interestingly, the three main parties have a pretty even spread across the regions, although Fine Gael and Labour have a much bigger story count (1106) verses FF’s 641. - RTE Online

Big Ian, that’s journalist Ian O’Doherty, wrote in the Irish Independent yesterday on the dangers of dashing Irish Independent journalists
jokingly asking election candidates out…

One of the younger candidates in this election, a girl of the female
persuasion, has attracted attention for her apparent good lucks. And,
in fairness, when you look at the
majority of Irish politicians, any
face which doesn’t curdle milk and make animals cry is going to look
good.

But it seems that this particular apprentice politico’s boyfriend needs to chill out. When a dashing Irish Independent journalist
jokingly asked this girl out on a date, her man went mental and rang
the hack on a Saturday evening, muttering darkly about "respect" and
"being offended" before warning ominously that if such a request was to
be made again, then "we’ll be having words, pal". - Ian O’Doherty, Independent.ie

The comment of the year goes to Sarah Carey, columnist with the Sunday Times (Irish edition) and blogger… (easily offended Sunday Independent readers may not want to read on)…

I’d love to meet Aengus Fanning sometime, but they’ll have to get excavators to rescue him from Bertie’s arsehole at this stage. - sarahcarey.ie

There’s some good advice on what to do when contacting Irish journalists at mulley.net, here.