- Emerson, Lake and Palmer performing their 1971 album version of Pictures at an Exhibition
The Cowengate controversy certainly caught the imagination this week; and, by way of update to my earlier posts on the topic, I’ve collected some more links about the affair below. Perusing the coverage in print, broadcast, and online, a question has repeatedly occurred to me: for all that there was online outrage, how much of it was reflected in the print or broadcast media? My impression is that whilst online commentary reflected and often relied upon the print or broadcast media, there was (by and large) very little traffic the other way. Is this a fair assessment? Answers, please, in the comments below.
[The remainder of the post is another compendium of links relating to the Cowengate controversy].
A A Doubtful Egg | A Word To The Wise … The Jackanory | Abigail Reilly | AF Picture | Alexia Golez | All Smoke and Mirrors here and here | Amynomad | Art blog by Bob’s post is now also here | ArtOsphere | As if I know what I’m talking about | Autonomous Astronaut
B BBC | Bifsniff | blah … blah … | Best of Both Worlds | Blog with a silly name | Bock the robber
C Cafe press | Caricatures Ireland | Catholic Ireland | CBC news | C’est la Craic | Clockwork Chartophylax | CloudSteph | Comment is free (Guardian) | Counago and Spaves here and here | Coxsoft Art News | Cuffe Street
D Daragh Lally | Down with my life | Dublin Opinion
E Eamonn Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day | Edward Winkleman | Eidetic Opacity | Elf in Amsterdam | Emily Tully | European in Ireland
F facebook group: Leave Conor Casby Alone! | Famewatcher | Fin O’Reilly | Foolish Interruption | Free Speech Blog (Index on Censorship) | Foolocracy | From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace
G Geoglyph’s Ramblings and and here | Global Post | Grow Up
I Indymedia | Irish election (May 07) | Irish Examiner | Irish Independent http://“>here, here, here and here | Irish street art | Irish Studies Review blog | Irish Times here and here
J Jackaheart’s Blog | johnkeyes on igopeople/
L Le Craic | Lenny’s logbook | Lowly journo | Lying for a living
M Magazine articles that drew my attention | Maman Poulet here, here and here | Mark Humphries | Marking Time | Matt Cooper | Maxi Cane | McGarr Solicitors | Memex 1.1 | Michael Barry | Mick Fealty | Most Sincerely Folks | My pink half of the drainpipe here and here
N Niall O’Loughlin here (and see also Sep 08) | No Ordinary Fool | Nothing to do with Arbroath | NPR
P Paul M Watson | Penguin forum | People’s Republic of Cork forum | Politics in Ireland
S Salon des Libertés | San Francisco Chronicle | Scotland on Sunday | Sentence First* | Slow Set | Slugger O’Toole here, here, here and here | Soft Irish Rain | St8ment – Urban art | Status Ireland | Stephen Kinsella | Stephen Spillane | Sueddeutsche.de | Sunday Independent here, here, here and here | Sunday Times Online here, here, here, and here | Sunday Tribune here, here, here, , here, here, here and here
T Teeshock | Teknovis here and here | The Autonomous Astronaut | The Blog Pound | The Hoff – Seamas Whelehan here and here | The Irish Chronical here and here (and, implicitly, here) | The Other Fellow | The Poor Mouth here, here, here and here | The Unemployed Blog here and here | Theresa Ryan | Tiny Panet | Town full of losers | TV3 | 200 words
W Whopper’s Bunker | “Why, that’s delightful!” with Graham Lenihan | Will Knott | Wikipedia here and here (but as yet neither here nor anseo) | Worth doing badly
PS I wonder what Guido or Ian Dale – let alone Political Betting – would have made of Cowengate if it had happened in the UK?
* In my view (against some tough opposition, in bold in this post and the earlier link-fest) Sentence First’s post Saints, censors and satire is the best piece I’ve come across about this whole silly saga.
Thanks for the link! Great to see that there’s an article on Wikipedia.
Nice bit of work, Eoin. Thanks for the link to my little effort and for pointing me towards Sentence First’s post. It really is an excellent piece of writing
I agree with you that the majority of online content made use of traditional media sources as well as other online ones, while the majority of traditional media outlets paid no attention to the blogging community. Most bloggers do not work in the mass media, but have always been regular consumers of print and TV media. For most of these bloggers, myself included, there is little distinction between how we use the old and the new media.
Practitioners of the traditional media have tended to be slow to embrace the internet as a source. On the one hand, they look down upon the blogging community because they do not believe that most bloggers have yet earned their spurs. On the other, perhaps they are worried because they see bloggers and their blogs as providing real competition to print and broadcast media.
In any case, newspapers from different stables will always be in competition with each other. The same goes for rival TV companies and the two media are always in competition with each other. Consequently, when they comment on each other it is more likely to be in a negative fashion than a positive one. In my view, the old media see the new media as another form of competition and, if they cannot comment upon them unfavourably, they will not acknowledge them at all
In general the print and broadcast media did not really take much from the online commentary beyond the usual “members of the blogging community were up in arms” shtick. The exception was the Daily Mail who brazenly stole a bunch of pictures from Creative Ireland and published them without attribution.
You’re too kind, Eoin. Thanks for compiling another bumper collection of links!
Hey, thanks for the links. Very much appreciated. I hate to tell you your business, but there was also a good post on this over at Not Good For My Rage.
http://notgoodformyrage.blogspot.com/2009/03/brian-cowenpicture-perfect.html
Thanks to you all for dropping by and commenting.
I’m particularly grateful to Pat for the considered response reinforcing my impression, and to Mark for the Daily Mail pointer.
NGFMR’s post is linked on my first collection of Cowengate links, but if anyone has any links that I’ve missed please let me know. I may yet compile a third link-fest.
If the traditional media don’t cover blogs they are accused of being old-fashioned or ‘slow to embrace the internet’; if they do they are accused of stealing content or being short of original ideas. It’s a ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ scenario.
It also begs the question why should newspapers cover blogs. The Irish Times doesn’t report on what the Irish Independent is writing, for example, why should it do so for bloggers?
Mark, if you or anyone they know had a picture used by the Daily Mail, then invoice them.
@Mark, can’t you see, the images are clearly attributed to the internet.
New post: http://www.culch.ie/2009/03/30/believe-in-free-speech-even-if-you-dont-like-whats-being-said/
I think this story would have died a very quick death had it not been for the online outrage. We know that one major radio station regularly sources stories from twitter, and others tend to keep at least half an eye on what’s happening online. The Irish Times journalist who pushed the story was Conor Pope, who we know to be a reader as well as a writer of blogs. And the Tribune’s coverage the other day was partly in consequence of Una Mulally’s awareness of the huge online reaction (and partly, admittedly, because they ran the story that started it all)
The Herald recently had the nerve to say that “media coverage [of picturegate] sparked a flurry of online activity” when the truth was surely the opposite.
who go the gardai reinvolved
the Sunday Tribune is now referring to this as Picturegate, I wonder if Cow And Gate has trademark issues?