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Paul <spikslow>

"sometimes called Tommy"

	"Tighe impertinent" -Phoenix (14th Aug 2009)	103 días hace
	PASTED DENIS O’BRIEN’S MEDIA WARS SUNDAY TIMES Irish editor Frank Fitzgibbon has felt compelled to write to The Irish Times twice in the last few months to defend his editorial policy. The first time was when his columnist Sarah Carey defected to the IT and told a tale of positively Stalinist proportions about how she had been disbarred from writing an opinion piece supporting a Yes vote in last year’s Lisbon Treaty referendum. The latest episode is far, far more serious, however, and involves Denis O’Brien’s running battle with the Moriarty Tribunal. Following O’Brien’s multi-pronged attack on the tribunal recently, a letter in the IT from a Tommy Tighe pointed out that the ST had painted O’Brien as “some sort of hero”. Tighe also pointed out that the ST had devoted a full page spread on the enormous costs of the tribunal and had also reported on another of O’Brien’s line on how to deal with INM’s current troubles (in which he is now the main player), all in the same edition. Fitzgibbon responded promptly, denying that the paper was in awe of O’Brien and arguing, strangely, that O’Brien’s “advertisement criticizing the Moriarty Tribunal, the one featuring chocolates, was based on facts first revealed in the ST”. Last Sunday, the ST gave the latest chapter in the O’Brien/Moriarty battle a big splash on the front page and devoted more space to O’Brien’s side of the argument than any other newspaper that day despite the correspondence being sent to the four broadsheet Sunday papers. The Sunday Independent did not make any mention of the story at all — which may come to be seen as a grave tactical error by editor Anguish Fanning at some stage in the future. The trouble for Fitzgibbon is that rumours swept the media grapevine in the last fortnight about him being head hunted by O’Brien to become editor at the Sindo. Fitzgibbon goes back a long way with O’Brien’s local spin doctor, James Morrissey — the two were founder members of the Sunday Business Post — and Morrissey is DOB’s chief adviser on editorial matters at INM. Changes will be implemented at the INM titles but the financial crisis for the group is so serious that the editorial purges have been put on the back burner. Fitzgibbon is going nowhere in the immediate future but in the mean time his critics have been putting it about that he is about to jump ship for the Sindo, hardly an inspired move given the current financial turmoil. This makes it difficult for Fitzgibbon in his editorial judgment and explains the testy letter to the IT which challenged not only Tighe’s impertinence but even the IT’s decision to publish the letter. Meanwhile, bloodcurdling threats of future salvoes from O’Brien are emanating from DOB’s camp with promises that when the summer is over there will be further assaults — in the media and in the courts — against Moriarty.
	escrito por Paul