Mayo TD demands that Minister appears before Oireachtas committee following claims media coverage of fuel protests was ‘unbalanced’
A Mayo TD has said Minister for Media Patrick O’Donovan should be brought before the Oireachtas Media Committee over his comments about media coverage of the recent fuel protests, insisting that “a free media cannot be lectured”.
On Monday morning, April 13, Minister O’Donovan told a local radio station in his home county of Limerick that he had asked Coimisiún na Meán to examine what he described as ‘unbalanced’ coverage of the protests, including reporting by RTÉ.
By Tuesday afternoon, it was reported that following a meeting with Coimisiún na Meán officials, the Minister was no longer seeking a review.
His party leader, Tánaiste Simon Harris, has since said there is no need for a formal review into the media coverage.
However, despite the clarification, Deputy Paul Lawless has called for the Minister to appear before the Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport.
“It was an authoritarian abuse of power for someone with his hands on the purse strings of media funding," he said. “No Government has the right to lean on broadcasters simply because it dislikes what the public is saying.”
He added that “free media cannot be lectured into line” and said that when a Minister “publicly questions whether broadcasters were ‘balanced’ enough in covering the desperation felt by families, farmers and small businesses, it risks creating the perception of political pressure on independent journalism”.
Deputy Lawless noted that Coimisiún na Meán has a statutory complaints process, adding that “political dissatisfaction with coverage should not overshadow the independence of the regulator”.
He said criticism of “lopsided” coverage, “simply because the public’s anger was too loud for the government's comfort”, was not the Minister's role.
“The Irish people deserve leadership that listens, not lectures. They deserve a Government that confronts the cost‑of‑living crisis, not the journalists reporting on it,
“They deserve a media that is free to reflect the truth, even when that truth is inconvenient for those in power,” Deputy Lawless said.
“After a week in which ordinary people were pushed to the brink by extortionate fuel prices, it is astonishing that the Minister’s instinct is not to listen, but to scold the media for giving those people a voice,
“At a moment of national strain, the Government’s priority appears to be managing the optics rather than managing the crisis,” he added.
“People were not on the roads last week for the fun of it. They were there because they could not afford to fill a tank, heat a home, or keep a business alive,
“The Government introduced a level of desperation into people’s lives, and is now irritated that the media dared to report it. You cannot set the house on fire and then complain that the neighbours are talking about the smoke,” he said, adding that the Government’s stance on media coverage “mirrors its wider failure to anticipate the consequences of its own policies”.
The National Union of Journalists also criticised the Minister’s comments, describing the call for a Coimisiún na Meán review of coverage of the nationwide fuel protests as “sinister and deeply disturbing”.
Séamus Dooley, assistant general secretary of the NUJ, urged the Minister to respect the role of independent journalism, noting that he is in a “position to influence the allocation of funds, the approval of commercial radio licenses and overall policy on broadcasting”.
"There's no place for Trumpian ad hominem attacks on journalists, and the minister's comments have caused genuine concern,” Mr Dooley added.
This article has been funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.