Digest – June 27 2010

Not much home stuff this week… entering silly-season early it seems. Or I missed something.

HOME

Sara Burke on the missing millions the HSE are pinning on Siptu.

Blog of Dominican Nuns in Ireland that I didn’t know existed.

Important ‘first’ pointed out by the Tombuktu on the CLR.

Karl Whelan, banking guarantee may have costly legacy.

I suspect that many people will have been surprised to hear the media report, time and again recently, that Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan, an international expert in banking matters, gave an almost complete endorsement to the bank guarantee, with his only quibble being the inclusion of subordinated debt.

In fact, this reporting has not been at all accurate. While the report does conclude that some kind of guarantee was required, it raises serious questions about the essential nature of the type of guarantee that was introduced.

WORLD

Cracking documentary by Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners program (like Prime Time Investigates) in association with The Age newspaper into corruption in currency production. Finding have global repercussions. Podcast with reporters here too. There the on-camera journalist, Nick McKenzie, notes…

Corruption never happens without people knowing it’s happening, be it in a police force, a government department or Securrency, the company involved in this scandal. It needs more than one person to operate… it’s not going to be open, people aren’t going to be saying around the office “oh we bribed Mr X last night, but at the same time, people will notice things.

And some of the decent ones, he goes on to say, will feel compelled to speak.

The researcher, Richard Baker, also says something well worth quoting…

And the other [misnomer] about digging – and I think it’s complete falsity that’s given to journalism students – is you have to build up a big black contacts book that has [in it numbers for] all the top officials in secret services. That’s rubbish. The way you dig is you use some common sense and you hit the phones and you figure out that there’s forty people that worked in this company between these years… let’s call every one of them. It’s as simple as that. The best stories aren’t got from existing stories, they’re got from a sniff and you just call people and they tell you things.

Jay Rosen on in-the-camp political correspondents from Politico who outed themselves as the Rolling Stone/McChrystal story emerged.

Now this seemed to several observers—and I was one—a reveal. Think about what the Politico is saying: an experienced beat reporter is less of a risk for a powerful figure like McChrystal because an experienced beat reporter would probably not want to “burn bridges” with key sources by telling the world what happens when those sources let their guard down.

Let me enumerate why this is worth noting: (continued)

Article about an interesting artwork that reflects the inter-relationship between art and time by New Scientist.

Freakanomics podcast, ‘how is a bad radio station like the public school system?‘ Thought provoking suggestions on education reform.

New series for The Nether Regions, ‘Crap jobs for the work experience kid’. Entry #1 here; being the burglar in the fear-mongering stock shots. Subscribe there; craic.

Vidjoe: Prince Charles is down with the kids at Glastonbury. Kinda, in a ‘casual’ suit. Slugger comment here.

Yglesias on the demise of the Chatham House rules left-leaning DC email list, JournoList.

OTHER

In honour of silly season. Vidjoe; country hip-hop dancing. Via Piaras on The Facebuke.

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