Let’s reverse the news agenda

THANK God for Pádraig Harrington. Just when we seemed destined to drown in a tsunami of miserable news about recession, shootings in Dublin and the Lisbon Treaty, it’s good to see the Irish media finally realising that good news — especially sports news — is indeed newsworthy.

Speaking on radio recently, the editor of a Sunday paper defended the media’s over-reliance on bad news to sell papers by declaring that “unusual” events are those most in demand from readers.

But what is unusual about a shooting in our capital’s inner city or a fatal accident overnight? Unfortunately, such news is no longer unusual and, frankly, it is becoming as dull to many of us as reports from courts and tribunals — the other staples of our typical news diet.