Fair and Balanced

'The Mail in Ireland will have to have a different slant as compared to the Mail in Britain'. Here my friend and I agreed and from there we discussed what kind of audience he might be writing for in his capacity working for the Daily Mail in Ireland.


For the past ten years and probably before, the Daily Mail has been serving up a diet of fear and loathing for the great British middle classes. Will Self wondered what effect Sars would have on property prices, because that is what Daily Mail readers want to know.

The arrival of the Daily Mail in Ireland has been prepared over a period of a few years. While other papers such as the Dublin Daily News came in and went in and out of business, Associated Press through its Irish arm- Ireland on Sunday- recruited either soon to be unemployed journalists or underpaid journalists.

It is one of the only media outlets that offers journalists a genuine career path hence the good stories from good professionals. While Michael O' Farrell of the Irish Examiner gave much coverage to the GAMA strike, he is one of several journalists to defect to AP succumbing to the allure of a decent career.

The Evening Herald sent a rookie reporter to cover the 2003 wedding in the Mansion House of the two homeless punks Joe and Joanne Neeson. The breaking story made the front pages and tv screens of the national broadcasters. This was followed up by an interview on Eamon Dunphy's Friday night chat show.

The Ireland on Sunday sent a squad of hacks to follow Joe and Joanne around for weeks in Ireland and her family in Manchester until they discovered the Jo did not invite her parents to the wedding. They delivered a splash on this scoop. The story sums up the mean nature of the leading lights in the AP empire. While some papers and yes the lazy journalists gave emphasis to the quirky nature of the wedding, the Mail's hack set out to destroy the good will the original story of two rough sleepers marriage in the Mansion House brought.

It is a case example of the motivations and mindset inside a paper whose history is littered with unsavioury connections including the Mosley fascists in the 1930s, while its screaming headlines aim to ram the Irish government into closing its borders to immigrants and to force existing migrant to speak English and abandon their own cultures if they wish to live here.

Yet the Daily Mail in the 1930s was the only British paper to openly support the German Nazi's while Lord Rothermere considered Hitler and Mussolini to be his friends. It considers itself to be anti- European, anti- immigrant, anti- abortion and pro- family (whatever that means), pro- church, pro- tax cuts.

The Mails front page expose of Stephen Lawrence murderers 'Murderers- if we are wrong let them sue' was shortlisted to one of the five most influential headlines of the 20th century, indicating its role as crucial opinion former.

This lays the basis for the next article in response to the coterie of right wingers employed as opinion formers in right wing newspapers that dominate the media landscape but profess to be a minority in a left wing dominated profession

Paranoia continued

Disembarking from the flight to Riga, my first reflections concerned the composition of those other passengers. Although the flight was full, there were not many other Irish on it, if any at all.

That night I went in search of a good bar where I might get chatting to some locals but unlike Latvians in Dublin there was no need or compulsion for them to learn or attempt English. This language difficulty in Riga set the tone for my whole trip.

However in Latvia, there was the familiarity of places like Ennis, Mayo and Dundalk, whereas in Russia and Ukraine I had to explain the physical location of Ireland a number of times.

Riga is a charming city that escaped much of the destruction of World War two and while appearing like many other European cities, I was pleasantly surprised with a good night out. It is underexplored as compared to stag night disco cities such as Prague and Talinn. Riga is at least on a Monday night a city for locals in the main.

I found a nightclub with a decent crowd in dancing to local pop music. The pleasant surprise was that the young people danced a waltz to the music. This was no 1950s ballroom but downtown in amongst the Riga hotspots. Given the waltzing combined with my lack of Russian and Latvian, dancing with an attractive local beat any conversation in recent months. So it was that I spent the night dancing cheek to cheek falling in and out of love by 3am closing time.

On the train the next day to St Petersburg, I had cause to reflect on the momentus journey I was embarking on. The train was at least fifty years old. Possibly in the last one hundred years, there were only two generations of trains. How many people had clandestinely travelled in and out of Russia in the last one hundred years?

James Connolly's son Roddy on his way to the first congress of the third International or perhaps John S Clarke the Scottish Parliamentarian, Poet and Lion tamer who gave a cure for Lenin's dog at the same congress. How many officials recalled back to Russia for 'discussion' from the front in the Spanish civil war or dissidents in the years up to 1989 travelled this route? No doubt amongst the ordinary passengers over the years, political revolutionaries lurked in the cabins of this and previous trains on this route.

Certainly my attitude was shaped by my understanding of Russia and also by advice from activists in Moscow 'that with the G8 Summit, we just don't know what the state will do'. So in anticipation of linking up with members of our sister party in Russia, I brought some copies of 'The Socialist' from Ireland, for their benefit.

Aware that the soldiers at the border checkpoint might search my bags, though I had thought this unlikely, I separated out any political literature in my bags to the cabin which would be overhead the door where the inspector would stand. Just because I was paranoid, it didn't mean they weren't looking at me. So at the border checkpoint my fears were confirmed. They carried out a thorough search of my bags and rucksack. Luckily there would be no questioning as I had removed any questionable i.e. political, material from the area.

As the train progressed away from the Latvian- Russian border I stepped up on the seat and replaced political newspapers back in my luggage knowing that now I was safe. I arrived in St Petersburg and was greeted by the Secretary of Socialist Resistance (CWI- Russia) who stated that we would have to wait at the station for a further while as the member he had travelled with had been called in for questioning (see previous report on Social Forum). We waited and chatted informally over a beer outside the station. When he was satisfied that there would be no further interuptions to our travels, he negotiated with a a private taxi to take us to Kiro Stadium.

On leaving the Russian Social Forum, a number of journalists from western press asked our group why we were leaving and one persistent US reporter for Associated Press Agency, Jim Heintz asked if he could ask a few more questions. We were making a quick exit from the stadium as some of the activists at the forum had decided on attempting a futile gesture at protesting.

We were keen to make our quick exit to avoid a pointless beating and arrest, so one member brushed Mr Heintz off with 'we late for our train' but he said that he would walk and talk with us.

In the course of the interview, I stated that the forum had been a very interesting experience in that I now realised that Russia was not only a dictatorship but a crazy dictatorship. I was referring to the disproportionate police activity in relation to the Social Forum which was attended by only 500 people, yet at least 3,000 police were involved in surveillance.

The next day in an internet cafe in Moscow, I found that I had been quoted in the Washington Post and other major newspapers. The Russian state's media monitoring unit would no doubt have cut out the artice for record given its content. After checking my email and indulging in a bit of pointless net surfing, forty minutes after being logged in, two police officers entered the cafe.

They walked around and definitely did not appear to be on the lunch break in order to indulge in their own personal interests. These men looked like they had a mission. They took glances at a number of computers. Thinking they could have been looking for me, I rose slowly my face flushed and made an exit out of the cafe having closed down all pages.

I swiftly walked and jogged to a safe distance cursing myself for paranoia at the same time advising myself of the need for that safe distance before sitting in an outdoor cafe drinking an expensive but soothing beer.

Pictures from Russia

This is me with some young activists in Yaroslavl, outside the building where they hold their Friday night film club.














This is the Kremlin as seen from the quay along the Moscow river.














Oh yeah, I met Ms Latvia (Lena) and Ms Norway (Donna) in the bar across the road from my hostel. How could I not put this picture up on the blog.















The famous Potemkin steps in Odessa as seen in the 1926 film 'The Battleship Potemkin' by Sergei Eisenstein.














A scene from the display at the Military museum in Victory Park, Moscow. The picture marks the Russian victory at Stalingrad. Note the disconsolate German soldier at the bottom of the picture. The picture in the museum is 150ft high and 150ft wide and appears in a 3-d format. It was only possible to photograph one section of this display.















A monument at Kiev Military Museum, to those who fought and died in World War Two.














A scene from the crucial Battle of the Kursk on display at Moscow Military Museum.














Mig jets on display at Moscow Military Museum. The Mig flies at 2500km/hr.















Drinking on the street is very normal in Russia and Ukraine. This is Slava opening my bottle.
















An atomic bomb transporter on display in Kiev's Military Museum.















Here I am pictured with the waitress from the Moscow to Kiev train. The man in the picture became a good vodka drinking buddy for a few minutes, hours - I don't know how long, but he seemed nice enough as did my other new friends made on this journey, thanks to vodka.
















Rocket launcher displayed at the outdoor museum at Victory Park, Moscow.














Pictured here are some captured German tanks on display now at Victory Park, Moscow.















Here, I am standing at the edge of the river Volga in Yaroslavl.














A monument built at the end of World War Two to symbolise unity between nations.













Lubianka- KGB/ KSB Headquarters. This building has seen thousands of miserable deaths from before the 1930s purges to recent times.













A scene from the Moscow metro. 4million of the city's 10m people use the metro every day. Trains come every minute.