Gavan Reilly: Hurlers from The Ditch deserve better than Dáil slurs
Micheál Martin’s unprompted – and largely unwarranted – broadside on the founders of The Ditch last week, over its reporting on Niall Collins, did at least achieve what was intended: it stopped us talking about the allegations about Niall Collins.
If you know that one of the Ditch’s cofounders, Chay Bowes, once sought a testimonial from Micheál Martin to publish on a previous company’s website, you may think differently about his more recent moves. So too might the knowledge that he was the whistleblower behind the controversy of Leo Varadkar leaking a draft GP contract to the National Association of General Practitioners, where he himself was previously an executive - meaning he was an indirect beneficiary of the action about which he then complained.
Similarly you might think differently of Paddy Cosgrave if you knew he had connected Bowes to Village magazine, getting the story published in the first place. You might also think differently of him if you knew his radicalisation against the centre-right establishment seemed to begin with the Web Summit having bigger ambitions (and higher WiFi expectations) than Dublin or the RDS could meet, and finding himself unable to bend Enda Kenny’s government to his will.
But should you think any differently? The version of the tale spun internationally – admittedly with a heavy helping by Bowes, who now appears to be a paid employee of Russia’s state-owned English language TV channel – doesn’t look at all good for the Tánaiste. An independent outlet uncovers a series of minor-but-legitimate political wrongdoings, some of those ministers resign, and a senior government figure then uses parliamentary privilege to cast questionable aspersions about the outlet, its backers and its motives.
When push comes to shove, isn’t that precisely what happened?
Your columnist was particularly struck by Micheál Martin’s claim of an “orchestrated” online campaign to force the story onto the public airwaves and into the Dáil. Even as someone on the receiving end of the opprobrium last week, from people accusing me on Twitter (as a high-profile ‘mainstream’ journalist) of trying to suppress the story through simply ignoring it, it’s hard to credit it as being an orchestrated thing. I reckon the legally prudent silence of mainstream outlets – unsure if the story was true, and temporarily unable to prove it themselves – probably caused more baffled curiosity than anything else.
The notion that the Ditch or its founders actively kicked up a fuss to demand a Dáil Q&A with Niall Collins is fanciful. So too is the contention that, by merely observing possible wrongdoing and asking the minister to account for himself, Holly Cairns and Paul Murphy are dancing to the Ditch’s tune (and even more so, by implication, the Kremlin). By the way, so too is Martin’s contention that the public ethics watchdog SIPO has been ‘weaponised’ through the mere act of someone making a complaint about an apparent wrongdoing.
By the by: I wonder if The Ditch’s editor will regret revealing on RTÉ Radio 1 last Sunday that Web Summit is bankrolling its operations to the tune of €1 million over five years. Up until now, the perception was that the website had no meaningful resources – making it pyrrhic for anyone slighted to sue them.