Short-term headline-grabbing will always bite the headline grabber

Likening anything short of racist mass murder to racist mass murder is offensive and stupid, writes Terry Prone

IN the middle of the sledding and igloo-making last week, the Taoiseach announced that he was going to have the special Strategic Communications Unit (SCU) reviewed. Not as much fun for the reviewer as sledding and igloo-making, but right and proper. Nonetheless.

If, as has been claimed, the unit tried to get regional papers to run advertorials in a way that made them indistinguishable from normal editorial, someone needs a smack upside the head for being naughty and naïve. The naughty bit is obvious. Less obvious is the naïveté about local newspaper editors, who may not be punitively principled but who are properly precious. Meaning? They may be silent to your silly face if you make such a proposition to them. They may not put their outrage on the front page of the paper that carries your advertorial. But they’ll make damn sure that outrage, unattributed, makes it to the front page of someone ELSE’s newspaper. Anybody working within mainstream media who doesn’t know that is an innocent abroad. And in media terms, there’s not much more dangerous a human than an innocent abroad wanting coverage for what they perceive to be a good cause. Minefields are immeasurably safer.