SIR ANTHONY O’Reilly has been sharply criticised by Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness over the O’Reilly-controlled Belfast Telegraph’s coverage of Northern Ireland politics.
In a joint letter in early March, the two accused the Telegraph of “relentless negativity” in its attitude to the work of the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly.
“We are writing to draw your attention to what we consider to be a quite serious deterioration in the Belfast Telegraph’s coverage of the work of the Executive and the Assembly,” they wrote.
Listing a series of complaints, Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness expressly complained about the newspaper’s coverage of job losses, and were clearly irked by coverage of the Assembly and Executive’s attempts to deal with the worsening crisis.
The two have made no public or private reference to the existence of the letter which is dated March 2nd, or about their complaints with the Telegraph, despite a number of encounters since with members of the press.
The existence of the letter was revealed by the well-known Northern Ireland blogger, Mick Fealty, who publishes sluggerotoole.com.
In the letter, Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness said the newspaper’s claim that it was “impossible” for anyone to get a full-time job was “lurid”.
“The leading article in the same edition accused the Executive of dithering and making excuses and covered quotes from stakeholders calling on the Executive to take steps we had already announced we were doing,” they said.
Later, they said the Telegraph “had attempted to claim credit for a speech” by the Finance Minister Nigel Dodds to the Assembly “just hours” after the newspaper had called on the Executive to focus on job creation.
“Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of how the Executive and the Assembly operated could see how ridiculous such a contention was,” the two politicians declared.
They added: “We do not seek to fetter in any way the freedom of the press, but by the same token we do not expect to see a campaign ostensibly about creating jobs being used to denigrate and undermine the Executive and the Assembly.”
The Ulster Unionist leader and the Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister have sought a meeting with Sir Anthony to “discuss our concerns with you and (we) understand you are already seeking a meeting with us on another matter”.
A spokesman for Sir Anthony last night said the letter had been “sent to a non-existent” address and it was not received by him “for some weeks”.
When it did arrive, Sir Anthony “passed the letter on to the Northern Ireland management, including the editor, and it was dealt with from there. As it should be. He is not going to meet with them about this,” the spokesman continued.
