Colin Sheridan: Smear v journalism — One intends to wound, the other to inform

When Ivan Yates went on a widely shared podcast and said he would 'smear the bejaysus out of her', meaning presidential candidate Catherine Connolly, he was injecting the virus, writes Colin Sheridan

Ivan Yates. File photo: Gerard McCarthy

When Ivan Yates uttered the "S" word this week, he knew the insidious suspicion he was sowing. 

He knew, too, that such suspicion travels faster than fact, takes root like Japanese knotweed and resists every repellent. It’s political malware — invisible, contagious, self-replicating. 

So, when he chose to go on a widely shared podcast and say, without irony, that he would “smear the bejaysus out of her”, referring to presidential candidate Catherine Connolly, he wasn’t joking. He was injecting the virus.

“Do you want a provo in the park?” he asked. “Is she a Russian asset?” Those weren’t off-the-cuff mutterings over a pint. They were deliberate, public, performative — examples of how to seed doubt while pretending to ask questions. 

“Nothing works like negative campaigning,” he added, as if teaching a masterclass in moral corrosion. The honesty of it was almost admirable. He said the quiet part out loud.

Because smear isn’t just a word anymore. It’s a worldview — a belief that reputation is disposable, that politics is blood sport, that fear is the only reliable currency. Once invoked, the word closes conversation. 

It marks the target as suspect and the accuser as righteous. Truth becomes irrelevant. Damage becomes the point. Yates’s declaration matters because it was calculated. It wasn’t satire or slip-up but strategy: frighten first, reason later, if at all.

It’s the logic of the modern campaign — emotion before evidence, suspicion before substance. Don’t argue your case; poison theirs. It’s quicker, cheaper, and infinitely more contagious. 

And it works. Fear out-sprints fact every time. It doesn’t require detail, only a whiff of danger. 

Suggest that someone might be linked to radicals or outsiders and the echo will finish the job. “I’m not saying she’s X,” Yates joked, “but…” That “but” is the gateway drug of political fear-mongering.

We shouldn’t kid ourselves that this is new. Every campaign now carries its background hum of rumour — WhatsApp chains, anonymous posts, insinuations whispered as news. We’ve become desensitised. 

The smear is now the ambient noise of public life. Yet not everything that offends or embarrasses a candidate is a smear. That distinction matters — and it’s the very one Yates’s mindset erases.

Jim Gavin

Consider Jim Gavin’s bruising few weeks. Before the rent debacle that sank his bid, he himself was hit by a baseless online rumour. It didn’t come from an opponent or a journalist. It simply appeared, fully formed, spreading like smoke: a claim with no evidence. 

It was false, but Gavin still had to waste precious campaign days fighting shadows. That was a smear — pure, designed, effective. Then came the real story, the one no one seemed eager to run. 

A former tenant claimed Gavin owed him €3,300 from 2009, money never repaid. There were documents, emails, and a timeline. Reporters approached it cautiously, checking twice before printing once. But the story held up. 

Facts replaced whispers. Gavin’s answers faltered, and eventually, the campaign crumbled. That wasn’t a smear. That was journalism — messy, necessary, and fair.

The difference between those two moments is the heart of this whole mess. One was fiction, launched to wound; the other, fact, pursued to inform. One spread through fear; the other through evidence. 

Fear v truth

A healthy democracy depends on knowing the difference. When every revelation is dismissed as a “smear”, scrutiny dies. When every whisper is treated as news, truth drowns in the noise.

Yates’s podcast performance — “smear the bejaysus out of her” — collapses that distinction on purpose. It tells political actors that all’s fair, that doubt is currency, and that truth is just one rumour among many. 

It’s a politics without conviction, a theatre of cruelty. What matters isn’t what’s real but what sticks. And that’s the most chilling part: it’s effective because it’s emotional. 

Fear is faster than thought. It bypasses reason, lodges in the gut, and hardens there. If voters can be convinced that a candidate is dangerous, radical, compromised — even faintly suspect — the work is done. No policy can compete with panic.

Before the rent debacle that sank his bid, Jim Gavin himself was hit by a baseless online rumour. File photo: Conor O'Mearain/PA

Fear is also cheap. It costs nothing to manufacture, travels instantly, and buys loyalty faster than any promise. But it comes with compound interest: cynicism, exhaustion, and the slow rot of trust. 

When every conversation begins in suspicion, people stop listening altogether. That’s not politics — it’s paralysis.

Yates probably will likely argue he’s just describing the game as it is. But saying the quiet part out loud doesn’t make it brave; it makes it bleak. 

It teaches the next generation of campaigners that integrity is a liability and that reputational violence is a sign of savvy. It tells the public that truth is optional, empathy expendable, and that politics is just performance warfare.