Michael Clifford: Varadkar gaffe was to find common cause with Trump

How dare he. How dare Leo Varadkar criticise the media. Does he not realise that we in the media are above all criticism?

Has he not taken account of how precious we are when it comes to evaluating our work?

There was a swift reaction to dispatches from New York about the Taoiseach’s “attack” on the media. He was reported as saying that Donald Trump’s criticism of the media was one of the few things on which he agreed with the US president.

Mr Varadkar cited an apparent interest in “gossip” in the media, a tendency to sensationalise news and deficiencies in investigative journalism.

Naturally, the fourth estate was outraged and hurt in equal measure.

Far more importantly, the opposition, in all its shades, stormed the ramparts in defence of free speech. (Let’s hope Mary Lou remains as committed to the media’s function when she’s serving in government).

Fianna Fáil’s Willie O’Dea said he was “absolutely flabbergasted” at the comments. And it takes a lot to flabbergast Willie.

He did make the most telling observation about Leo’s issue over trivialising the news. “This was the guy who arranged for a photograph of himself putting a spoon in his dishwasher,” Mr O’Dea said. They don’t come much more trivial than that.

This sterling defence of the media by opposition politicians will no doubt find voice when they ascend to power and liberalise some of the most draconian libel laws in western society. And they will do so as pigs go cloud-hopping across the sky.

The reality is Mr Varadkar made one major boo-boo which was finding common cause with Mr Trump. Apart from that, his comments deserve some parsing.

His criticism appears to have been specifically directed at political journalism.

Does the media in this sphere sensationalise and trivialise? Quite possibly, yes in some respects.

One reason for this is that in today’s media environment government politicians frequently trivialise — Leo is an expert in this field — to deflect from real issues.

And opposition politicians increasingly sensationalise in order to inflict political damage on the Government and snaffle more headlines in the 24-hour news cycle.

Politics and media feed off each other in this regard. The subject is worthy of some debate, but that was not the issue that the Taoiseach was concerned about.

Sensationalism has also spilt over from social media which is exercising a certain unquantifiable pull on the so-called mainstream media. That’s life, and neither politics nor media can completely isolate themselves from it.

His criticisms of investigative journalism are also worthy of perusal. On Wednesday, in attempting to “clarify” his comments, he referenced the RTÉ Prime Time Mission To Prey programme in which a priest was falsely accused of fathering a child.

The programme was broadcast in 2011, all of seven years ago. RTÉ made a major financial settlement with the wronged man, and those most closely associated with the mistakes actually lost their jobs.

Such a level of accountability would be unique to the world of politics when it gets matters wrong on anything less than a collapse of the economy.

The same Mr Varadkar recently praised RTÉ Prime Time for its investigation into hospital consultants undertaking private work at the expense of their public duties. So, like Mr Trump, he appears to be all in favour of journalism once it serves his purpose.

Investigative journalism is one of the main casualties of the new order in which everybody is conditioned to believe and accept that news can be created free gratis.

The fact that, occasionally, journalism gets things wrong — as everybody does — is a minor issue compared to the erosion of the media’s function in holding power to account.

Criticism of any of these matters is perfectly legitimate if done in a proper context and with the purpose of generating debate on standards and solutions.

When it is framed in finding common cause with Mr Trump it takes on a dark hue. The US president does not believe in a free press. He believes in Fox News which acts as his unofficial cheerleader.

He believes attempts to legitimately hold his office to account are a personal attack on his character and must be met with his kind of aggression and bluster that has served him so well in business.

There is hardly a politician this side of the 17th century who believes he or she always gets a fair shake from the media. However, as these things go, Leo Varadkar has less to crib about than most.

He must know that he has got a far cushier ride than most of his immediate predecessors, but then fairness is always in the eye of the beholder.

Perhaps the man is just still smarting from the demise of his Strategic Communications Unit which was largely created to control the Government’s narrative and, by extension, arguably undermine the function of the media.

Leo Varadkar is no Donald Trump. He is though worryingly prone to gaffes, particularly when removed from the hothouse of domestic politics.

If only he could feel our pain he might realise that we are just as precious about criticism as he himself quite obviously is.