Mad Mullah bites the hand he feeds again

According to RTE, Justice Minister Michael McDowell launched another unwarranted attack on the media last night.

Apparently, the Minister believes that truth is becoming a casualty in the reporting of politics in Ireland. He also warned other politicians against courting cheap headlines.

Obviously the hypocrisy of the man has few limits, if any.

Wasn't it McDowell, after all, who used Dail privilege to accuse prominent investigative reporter Frank Connolly of travelling to Colombia on a false passport, and being involved in a plot to provide FARC guerillas with IRA explosives?

His accusation has been vociferously denied by Connolly and disregarded by the Gardai. But that did not prevent McDowell leaking his non-story to a pet hack at the Irish Independent.

But the end result of this appalling smear was that funding was withdrawn for Connolly's Centre for Public Inquiry, a thinktank unpopular with the government due to their exposure of state and corporate corruption.

It is no coincidence that the man dubbed the 'Mad Mullah' by the Irish Star is no fan of the media. His grubby pawprints are already all over the forthcoming Privacy Bill which is aimed at silencing the media and preventing them from doing exactly the sort of digging into the great and the good that Frank Connolly was so respected for.

He also criminalised crime reporting in a previous instance of seeking to gag the pesky fourth estate, by introducing a five year sentence for Gardai who speak to journalists.

Clearly, McDowell would rather exist in a state where the media did not exist to report on his draconian excesses of power.

One can only hope, for the sake of independent reporting in Ireland, that the electorate throw this demagogue out on his well-heeled ear come the next election.