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Notes -
This afternoon, an Algerian man who'd been resident in Ireland for years approached a crèche in the Dublin city centre and stabbed a teacher and several children, all of whom have been hospitalised. A man intervened and tackled him to the ground (I've heard unconfirmed reports that he was Brazilian, making this something of a wash from an anti-immigration perspective).
In a remarkable display of striking while the iron is hot, an anti-immigrant group organised a protest outside the Dáil (lower house of parliament) later this afternoon. Protesters clashed with police officers at the scene of the crime. Before long it escalated into a full-scale riot, the likes of which I've never seen before in Dublin. A bus was set on fire, as was at least one police car and a Luas (the light rail system serving Dublin). A Holiday Inn was set on fire. Shops have been smashed up and looted. I had to get a taxi home as the public transport has been suspended. Walking through the streets is eerie, they're largely empty aside from riot cops carrying riot shields very forcefully redirecting me. Helicopters are still circling overhead.
My gut feeling is that this is primarily the work of opportunistic scumbags rioting for the fun of it, for which a fairly small protest which got out of hand was merely the catalyst. On the other hand, I have heard a lot about the alleged "rise of the far right" in Ireland over the course of the last few years, and the fact that it happened so soon after Geert Wilders' election is certainly odd timing.
EDIT: See also @Tollund_Man4's more detailed write-up in the transnational thread.
I saw some news articles online about this in Australia earlier today.
What I found really conspicious was that in virtually all the articles there was absolutely no description of the perpetrator of the stabbing other than 'man' or at best 'older man', which was the spark that cause the protest/riot (depending on your political persuasion). There was also no mention that I can recall of the perpetrator being tackled and restrained by a member of the public, and certainly not that he was Brazilian. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the crime was committed by an Irish native.
Except, of course, the second half of all these articles all quote a bunch of Irish politicians and other public figures condemning the riot as the actions of a hateful, far-right mob, or similar words to that effect. Which kind of gives the game away. Do they think by merely mentioning the background of the stabbing perpetrator they will give credance to the 'hateful far-right riot', like invoking a spirit?
It's one of many cases where the news media (at least here in Australia), technically report the story factually accurately, but but omits some details and is framed in such a way to only lead you to one conclusion. They can avoid claims of editorialising by claiming they are merely quoting and reporting on statements made by politicians, which is also true.
I would like to hear a journalist's perspective on this some day. Is it taught? Is the intuitive grokking of those rules – condemn the far-right mob, but don't explicitly spell out their casus belli, so the impression is that far-righters are just spontaneously violent – a job requirement? Am I too deep in a bubble and it's just common sense already to speak this way here and the other way around about George Floyd?
I suspect the tactic actually works – remember, 50% of people are below average, and the average ain't that high, and it's white people who are the target audience, so they just trust journalists to do a honest job.
I would be shocked if Journo-list wasn't still around, and journalists almost by definition are much better educated than they are remunerated and live in urban areas, so they tilt pretty heavily left anyways.
Schooled. Journalism schools still exist, but I hesitate to say educated because at least from my conversations with the students they were not well rounded independent thinkers. They learn good technical writing of articles, but generally don’t get enough background in other subjects to allow them to understand what is actually happening.
I mean, isn’t that kinda not their job? Journalists are biased, but they’re definitionally reporters and not supposed to be running blogs.
Pushing a narrative is a problem, but they’re actually supposed to be writing articles along the lines of ‘experts say x about y’- it’s what we pay them to do.
I mean the problem with sending someone to report on a topic that knows little about the topic is that they don’t have any way to vet what each set of experts is telling them.
A scientifically literate reporter is probably going to have some insights into how diseases work and how germs spread and so on. Maybe not perfect but enough to know where the expert’s story might not add up, or what questions need to be answered or even whether the research referenced says what the expert claims it says.
A political science literate person who knows the history and main actors in Israel and Gaza is not simply going to uncritically report the two competing narratives and call it good. They’re in some sense going to examine the evidence in light of what is known about the parties and give as accurate of a picture of what’s actually true.
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