As the dust begins to settle after the Euro Election results, NBNW has been reflecting on coverage of the results in the local papers.
We were shocked last Tuesday to sit down to read the Journal with a cup of tea and a scone from Louis Cafe to read the front page headline where Martina Anderson claimed to have won Foyle. SDLP Colr Mark H Durkan bizarely claimed to be disappointed to win the seat, but did the party really expect to win a seat? Surely a per cent increase is the best they could have realistically hoped for.
Colr Martin Reilly SDLP had a letter in Friday’s Journal suggesting that Sinn Fein had no tallymen there and couldn’t possibly have known one way or another. Did the Journal not ask the other parties for their view? Did Colr Durkan provide this information to the Journal at the time? It doesn’t seem the Journal were too worried as the original story didn’t even carry a percentage or estimate poll figure from ‘Hans Christian’ Anderson. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were reading An Phoblacht!
Either the Journal’s journalism is poor or else it should own up to being a pro Sinn Fein newspaper. It has to be one or the other. This isn’t the sort of stuff any properly run paper – even a Sinn Fein voice piece – should run without proper checking out of the facts.
They say you can’t believe everything you read in the papers. Soon you’ll have to wonder if you can believe anything you read in the Derry Journal.
Great post!
By: thousmon on July 6, 2009
at 4:54 pm