Laughable genre of tweet today that Ireland somehow has a press corps free from cognitive bias or personal opinion.

Journalists do a professional job but to act like they have no personal bias is ridiculous.

Take a look at that golf article as an example.

A story like that typically gets broken when someone in attendance gives a tip-off to a journalist.

It doesn't get broken by telepathy or psychic powers.

What journalist you'd approach would depend on your perception of their biases.

Lets look at the 2 journalists.

They did a very professional, excellent job on the story.

Paul wrote this tweet last year saying he doesn't understand why people think he's a member of Sinn Fein and he feels this is bizarre and weird.

Maybe, just maybe, people developed that false impression because he regularly defended Sinn Fein from criticism.

That would be a good way for people to have arrived at that wrong conclusion.

On the other side of that story, Aoife regularly amplifies SF supporter talking points.

Such as insinuating Simon Harris had bots leaving him nice comments on his tweets.

The idea people might just join Twitter in a lockdown didn't occur...

She wrote an article on racism in Irish society. Not a bad article.

The tweet combined with the accompanying photo, would lead people who didnt read the article to a false impression that Leo said there is no racism issue in Ireland, when he said no such thing.

Instead of quoting Leo, she used his photo and framed the tweet in such a way that would make him look bad to people not bothered to read the article.

In contrast, on the same day, she did quote Mary Lou which made her look very good in comparison.

Journalists are eminently capable of removing personal feelings from their work.

Both journalists on the golf did so and did a very professional job.

But to act like personal opinions & cognitive biases don't exist in Irish journalism is absolute manure, of course they do.

I guarantee if there's a story that makes SF look bad, people will approach journalists with FG leanings - of which there are very many.

The reverse is true for stories that make Govt look bad.

Everyone knows what journalists to go to.

People are kidding themselves if they think our independent press are robots.

They have cognitive biases and views just like US and UK press do - and that directly influences the type of information they receive.

We don't have some magical opinionless press corps.