Sir, – Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has told DCU FM that the media should be investigated because journalists followed him instead of following the economy (Home News, October 19th). Clearly The Irish Timesis to blame for the recession.
Independent News and Media is responsible for Priory Hall. T he Irish Examinershoulders the blame for widespread unemployment. And RTÉ must answer for the national pensions crisis.
Bertie’s blatantly self-serving comments to DCU FM would be risible were it not for the fact that we find ourselves in such terrible circumstances.
Many graduates and other young people are being forced to emigrate because he and his government squandered their future.
Even still, there is a germ of truth in his comments on the media. The media no doubt could have done better. Without a strong, critical and independent media citizens are at the mercy of people inside the tent.
Yet I recall one PR consultant who thought that Bertie Ahern was being "hunted down by a bloodthirsty media" but who wrote in the Sunday Business Postin June 2007, that if you "turn on RTÉ, read the papers, tune into radio broadcasts you'd swear we were heading straight for recession". Those media appear to have seen it coming before Bertie did.
The same consultant wrote that one of the country’s leading economists had “rightly slammed negative reports of our current economic situation”, and had “suggested that certain elements in the media are trying to talk us into a recession and do not give a true picture of how the economy is performing. He suggested misleading headlines were taking things out of context”. Perhaps Mr Ahern missed those headlines, – Yours, etc,