Why the media elected to get personal

DAVID Norris was in manic form. He leapt from voter to shopper, pressing his bumptious charm on everybody.

It was October 6, and Norris was canvassing The Square shopping centre in Tallaght.

Over the previous 24 hours, two opinion polls revealed that Norris’s vote was in danger of collapsing. The results came after a week in which he was mired in controversy. He was refusing to publish letters he had written 15 years previously to Israeli judicial and government figures, pleading clemency for his former partner, who had been convicted of statutory rape.