Donal McIntyre Assists Limerick’s Gangs.
On his blog, Donal McIntyre describes himself as follows: “Donal MacIntyre is an investigative journalist, specialising in hard hitting investigations, undercover operations and television exposes. He has won praise for his courage, and campaigning zeal particularly his consistent work in the area of care homes for the elderly and the learning disabled. “
This badly written testimony is completely inaccurate. A man who describes himself as courageous but cried like a baby in a cab home from Clapham after a thug showed him a knife. Said thug did not brandish said knife in any kind of threatening way but it was enough to have the impeccably coiffured McIntyre crying like a small frightened child. So we’ve gotten rid of the part where he states that he has won praise for his courage. He starts this blurb by stating that he is an investigative journalist. Now, I once put a band aid on a child’s cut knee but I don’t go around calling myself a surgeon. After watching Donal’s sensationalist, tabloid and criminally unbalanced documentary about Limerick’s gangs last week, I can only come to the conclusion that Mr McIntyre is not an investigative journalist. He comes across as a bit of a shaper, really, so his blurb should read as follows: “Donal MacIntyre is a shaper, specialising in sensationalist rubbish that only serves to glorify gangland scumbags. He once cried when someone showed him a butter knife in Clapham, and his complete ignorance of the subject he is supposed to be investigating, makes him more of a plonker than anything else. ”
I’m not saying that Limerick is some understated utopia. Far from it. We have a small number of scumbags who are fucking up a great city. McIntyre states at the outset that Limerick has always been skilled in the art of war and today is no different. Limerick was a garrison town so I suppose we were, in some small measure, skilled in the art of war. But just take a look at that statement. Who does that really speak to? If I was a gang member, I’d be pushing my chest out saying, “Fucking right, sham.” I’d be proud as punch.
Look, a few other bloggers have waxed lyrical about this clown and I’m not going to go into the flawed and unfair, “murder capital of Europe” statistic that he spewed forth. I’m not going to go on about his rehashed, have-arsed reporting of what is a great City because other bloggers - notably Bock the Robber, who is listed in my links section - have done a great job on this already. My point is this. What do these documentaries actually achieve?
Here’s my take on it. If one scumbag kills another scumbag, that’s a public fucking service and shouldn’t even make the news. It is right to report on innocent people like Shane Geoghan getting murdered by these horrible little scumbags but Mr McIntyre didn’t treat that part of the story with the dignity it deserved either. He did very little right in this documentary. These guys are loving the attention and people like Donal McIntyre are giving them the attention they want. I noticed, while watching this ridiculously bad and self-serving programme, that Donal didn’t talk to any gang members - probably for fear of one of them brandishing a nail clippers, which would send him blubbering like a lost child back to his hotel room. Donal gives them an almost romantic billing, while making the rest of Limerick look like a cesspool. Why didn’t he comment on the brilliant artists, musicians, writers and poets of Limerick City? Why didn’t he take a look at our indigenous sense of humour? Why didn’t he take a look at the many positives? Well, because they don’t fit with the sensationalist, fear-mongering claptrap for which he has now become renowned. It’s not newsworthy to report on something positive. People like Donal McIntyre are actually exacerbating a very serious problem with gangs.
They love the publicity and that’s exactly what this clown has given them. What has he given the rest of us law-abiding Limerick people, who make up the vast majority of the 120,000 population? He’s given us another unwanted and unwarranted label. There is another legion of little scumbags who will look at that and say, I want to be famous too.
The gangs in this town need to be stopped but documentaries like this will not stop them. I will watch the Dublin one, if he makes it, but I’ve a feeling he’ll need more than an hour to tell that story and I very much doubt he’ll do the same kind of hatchet job on the Capital that he did on Limerick. I left a comment on his blog but it has not been published. He seems to want to dish it out but he can’t take it. I’d complain him to the broadcasting standards organisation but he doesn’t seem to have any standards, nor does the station that sanctioned this unhealthy and unhelpful piece of crap.
