By Bill Heaney
A theme throughout The Irish Times coverage this weekend, across different issues and different parts of the world, is the threats the media faces externally and from within.
Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan writes about George Clooney and his role as Edward R Murrow, the CBS anchor regarded as the most trusted man in 1950s America, in a New York play.
Duggan writes the conceit of Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck concerns Murrow’s courageous stand against the bullying “Red Scare” senator Joseph McCarthy despite mounting pressure from his network.
Clooney was filmed outlining the theme of the play in a segment on 60 Minutes (RTE) before opening night.
In this segment Clooney said “when the other three estates fail – when the judiciary, the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the Fourth Estate (the media) has to succeed”.
“Has to succeed,” Clooney repeated.
Last week saw the resignation of Wendy McMahon, the chief executive officer of CBS News, who cited her disenchantment with the network’s position in relation to a lawsuit issued against it by Donald Trump. McMahon is the latest casualty in Donald Trump’s long, slow war on mainstream media.
The legal action concerns the US president’s accusation that 60 Minutes, the flagship CBS current affairs show for six decades, edited a Kamala Harris interview to reflect favourably on her during the presidential election, Duggan writes.
He notes it also represents the battle for control over the independence of US media for which the Clooney play provides a parallel.
The Trump legal complaint states the CBS editing of the Harris interview was election interference and is demanding an astonishing $20 billion in compensation.
Duggan writes that Paramount, the CBS parent company wishes to settle the Trump lawsuit even though CBS is adamant that it is without merit.
The broader context is that Paramount is eager to complete an $8 billion merger with Skydance, for which it will require approval from the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Duggan notes.
There have been other high profile US media departures. Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, resigned in April saying it “has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it”.
Last December ABC News settled a lawsuit with Trump, then US president-elect, for $15 million. The Washington Post has seen high-profile resignations after its owner, Jeff Bezos, spiked the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.
While Clooney says the Fouth Estate “has to succeed”, the question Duggan asks is “can it?”.
Another threat to the standing of the media is highlighted by Paul Kearns, an Irish-born freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv.
With the humanitarian crisis in Gaza reaching ever-more shocking depths, Kearns says “one question that is rarely answered is how ordinary Israelis feel about this and how much do they know about the imminent Israeli-induced famine on their doorstep?”
He notes the war Irish people see in the media is not the war people living in Israel see. “Israeli media – in particular the three mainstream news channels – simply do not show the most harrowing images that the rest of the world has been seeing for nearly 18 months of war.”
He writes from Israel where he recently showed his friends in Israel a photo of a starving baby in Gaza and asked them had seen the photograph of six-month-old Siwar Ashour who was being treated for malnutrition at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza?
“Not one of them could recall seeing any images of emaciated children on Israeli television news.”
Kearns says the gap between how mainstream media inside and outside Israel report on what is happening in Gaza has widened in recent months.
This has seen the coverage move from “understandable differences of polarised political opinion” into what he describes as a “chasm of counterfactual storytelling”.
With just one, notable exception, the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, the media in both Hebrew and English is failing ordinary Israelis, according to Kearns.
“I have little doubt that history will not be kind to how Israeli news channels met their responsibilities to show the truth of what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is doing and has done in Gaza in the name of all Israelis.
“I also do not doubt that Israeli children will be asking their parents in the years ahead some variation of the question I asked: what did they know or not know about the Israeli-induced starvation in Gaza,” he writes.
Although we are only a tiny cog in the wheel of world journalism, we endeavour to get to the truth at every turn. The Dumbarton Democrat reports without fear or favour on world events, but we are being gagged by organisations such as the Scottish Labour Party and the SNP. Labour-controlled West Dunbartonshire Council won’t even let us speak to their so-called communications team. We are banned. Something should be done about this before Secret Scotland stretches its tentacles further and instead of just giving us quotes, the spin doctors and politicians who finance them (up to £500, 000 a year in the case of WDC) take over the media. The Council which has a reputation for bullying and victimisation and could soon, as newspaper circulations decline exponentially year on year mainly due to changes in technology, start doing what their predecessors prior to local government reorganisation, Dumbarton District Council, start producing their own newspaper, which failed miserably and cost the council taxpayers a fortune. Just one of the current spin doctors is costing the council £130,000 a year. That’s her salary and there are other staff costs. Would it be wrong to ask when this post was advertised and what the remit for it is, or is the Council in Dumbarton being anti-democratic and acting illegally? Editor