Fintan O'Toole v Eoghan Harris debate: another thread ruined

That would explain a lot.

Seems you won’t go anywhere in journalism unless you know some people high up the press chain.

https://www.thephoenix.ie/2021/05/eoghan-harriss-sindo-tribe/

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Section 31 alive and well with Harris still I see. Didn’t like anyone having the right to reply. Same cunt was Je suis Charlie a few years ago of course though.

I’m not sure that’s true anymore. Journalism is pretty much dead.

Sure you could start a blog with your views and share it on Twitter and if it got popular you can start making some money off it.

I’d imagine this is the reason a lot of established journos are turning into absolute nutters. Their career is dying and there’s nothing they can do about it.

I do think he was being harshly treated over the comment around Aoife Moores backside and it is being spun by her as an attack on her weight when I don’t believe that was the intention?

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Sensationalism sells.

Libertarian logic that says that the worth of an opinion can only be measured by the amount of reaction it generates. Which obviously is disastrous for public debate. That’s why we’re seeing increasing numbers of self styled “tell it like it is” (isn’t) “contrarians”, particularly right wing ones. That’s why you’re seeing a lot more nutters out themselves or playing the nutter for money.

But playing according to that credo is a very fine line and those who play by it very often end up going off a cliff edge.

Substack and the Patreon/Paypal/Donate To Me! grift provides an opportunity for those gone off the deep end to make a buck but you usually need a pre-existing profile to do that. But there are no quality control standards.

The Sindo, whatever you think of them, do have to have some sort of quality control standards.

I thought English’s editorial was fair enough.

Funnily enough the “established journos” in this country who have visibly turned into nutters, ie. Myers, Hook, Harris, Waters, MacKenna, all had secure careers - at least had they not made the decision to torch them.

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I think it’s long past time that middle aged men should refrain from trying to “correct” women about “misinterpreting” obviously sexist, sexualised comments by men about them.

I’d say when a well known 80 year old man is making comments about a young woman’s arse from an anonymous twitter account there’s enough wrong with it that we don’t need to go worrying too much about his real intent.

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Total snowflake woke Paddywhackery. Are we no longer able to suggest that someone is turned on/off by something for for of causing grievous psychological harm?

Your being ageist.

Dumb.

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The Sindo has published two cartoons portraying Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald in recent times which I think could both fairly be classed as misogynist and, in the case of one of them, sexualised. I wonder what influence Harris had over their publication/creation.

In the woke world we live in its sadly not.

In a way it’s irrelevant… But I’d agree. But it’s 2021 now…the whacky left find outrage in everything… But I’m delighted for him and happy to pile in and call him a pervert.

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It must be great to have your worldview made up entirely through the framework of buzzwords and cliches, all the same. A lovely, lobotomised worldview. And so much time is saved. You never have to think.

Not publicly. I’m sure it’s ok with a bunch of mates though. The tweet about Ciara Kelly having a leather fetish was bizarre and sexual. It’s plain weird that a journalist in particular would post that stuff.

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Anyone who praises and lauds Harris and his views and articles which were expressed on the Independent as English did is neither fair or balanced.

The guy is a loon and how he has made a career in journalism and media and has regularly been given a platform to pedal his bitter, vitriolic and inflammatory rhetoric is incredible.

I think it’s fair to deduce the legal action underway and the blowback on the Indo was the real reason he was let go.

The Indo are a total and utter disgrace of a media outlet.

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As far as I see it, the difference between Ervine and McMichael and Billy Hutchinson was that Ervine genuinely believed - or had come to believe - in a genuine left-wing analysis of NI society - real equality of opportunity and parity of esteem, that Catholics and Protestants, Unionists and Nationalists, have and should have much more that unites them than that which divides them. That a fair society - whichever side of the tracks you’re from, should be the primary aim, whether you’re British or Irish.

Whereas the other two didn’t/don’t. They believed in the sort of “socialist” analysis that led to the the Ulster Workers Strike. ie. workers’ rights, as long as you’re a Protestant Unionist. They essentially believe the chosen people myth.

Sophie Long is a very interesting character. It seems to me she is very much a disciple of Ervine’s latter day thinking. And that’s why she was forced out of the PUP. There are very few of her like around.

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You don’t have to like Harris’s articles, and I didn’t. I think he’s a gobshite. The point is, what Harris wrote in the Sindo came from a legitimate standpoint, (mostly at any rate, in my memory), ie. fierce opposition to Sinn Fein.

The bar for what is legitimate opinion cannot be set at “whatever I agree with”. It’s a fair argument to say that Harris himself failed to or refused to understand that fairly basic idea. I think he did refuse to understand it.

What he got up to online was not legitimate. It was underhand, misogynistic, targeted abuse. His personal brand was about sailing close to the wind and like so many right wing contrarians, he eventually crossed a line. I don’t really think he can have too many complaints.

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Shure didn’t she have to seek counselling and police protection for herself and her arse. A serious business

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