Blurred Keys

- Firm say they are not acting on any clients’ behalf
- Solicitors ask for the “name and address” of users
- Politics website transfers to US servers after claim

Frank Ward & Co, solicitors for Taoiseach and the Fianna Fail, have had comments removed from an Irish politics website after claiming them to be libellous to the firm.   

The offending posting on Politics.ie referred to the handling by Frank Ward & Co of their former client Grainne Carruth around the time she was giving submissions to the Mahon Tribunal. Carruth, who is Bertie Ahern’s former secretary, changed solicitors between different dealing she has had with the tribunal.

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The website of the Munster Express (pictured above) is one of the clean, clearest and easiest to navigate designs we’ve seen for a regional Irish newspaper. And like a grown number of UK counterparts, it’s built in the free Wordpress content management system.

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Shane Hegarty, over at the Irish Times blogs asks if "All these journalism courses must mean a higher standard of writing … right?"

He has got a bit of a debate going in the comments section too. We might comment more on this later. (via mulley.net)

Hegarty’s post last year on a higher diploma in journalism by the Irish Academy of Public Relations is quite amusing.

The National Union of Journalists’ magazine, Journalist, has gone online, with at least the April edition only being distributed in digital form.

While the publication was previously only posted to NUJ members, it can now be viewed at thejournalist.org.uk.

A PDF version is also downloadable, and is designed for printing in A4.

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Four BBC journalists were arrested – with a number of others – by gardai investigating paramilitary activity in Donegal over the weekend. Footage was also seized, and it is still unclear why the arrests were made.

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Why aren’t Irish student newspapers online? Few have sites with content pages, a few more with just PDFs, others with out-of-date PDFs, and more with no working website at all.

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A jury verdict that a restaurant review in the Irish News was libellous has been overturned by Judges at the Belfast Court of Appeal.

Ciaran Convery, owner of the ‘Goodfellas’ restaurant, had said
the review was a "hatchet job," he was quoted by the Guardian as saying yesterday: "In my eyes it makes a farce of the judicial system when a jury is overturned… It’s not over yet. It was never about the damages anyway."

The appeals court left the option of a retrial open, but it is up to Convery to pursue one, and the Irish News has said they will defend any further action.

MORE: At the Guardian (free) or at the Irish Times (subs reqd)

…they’re likely to get caught in Ireland. As Shane Hegarty points out on the Present Tense blog…

Somehow, Glenda Gilson seems an appropriate start, so you send out a
press release in which you say that your bloggers are “…clearly nutty
about the Irish TV Presenter & Model”. You make “limited edition
Gilson fan packs”, which include t-shirts (”Just been on a benda with
Glenda”) and rabbit on about your salty snacks while you’re at it. On
the blog you put a gallery of things they’re “just nuts about”,
featuring only pictures of their salty snacks (which, I’m guessing, are
pretty much like any salty snack on the market).

And Mulley.net has more.