Media's rush to advocate serves nobody
Seamus Culleton is pictured with his wife Tiffany Smyth.
“You were right!”
The older man paused in the cold drizzle on a wet Ballina street and his face lit in recognition of me. He pointed to the rolled up timidly poking out of a plastic bag, held tightly in his hand, and added: "He is no angel alright."
The rain drove both of us on our separate ways, before I could form a pithy reply. Or indeed any sort of reply. But, I knew what he was referring to.
Seamus Culleton’s five-month detention by ICE for overstaying his US visa has made the headlines in America and around the world after his heartfelt pleading on RTÉ radio.
However, as I reported last week, there was just one problem for me: “I don’t believe Seamus.”
I knew about his outstanding drug charges in New Ross District Court, which I guessed was a good reason why he chose to be detained rather than deported when a judge ordered him back to Ireland — where Culleton could have continued his Green Card application. So, I was suspicious of his choice considering everyone knew of the horror stories relating to ICE detention facilities. Thus, I had serious scepticism over the elevating of the Kilkenny man’s case as a cause célèbre against Donald Trump’s administration and ICE.
I didn’t know that he had apparently abandoned his former partner Maggie Morrissey in Ireland and their two young daughters, Melissa and Heather, never paying “a penny” in child support in all of their nearly 19 years.
According to Heather: “He was making himself out to be a saint, like he’s done nothing wrong, like he knows that there are warrants here for his arrest and that was going to come out”.
The sisters were also angry over a GoFundMe campaign that has raised nearly $30,000 for Culleton’s legal fees, with Melissa calling it “nearly child maintenance money”.
The new revelations were picked up by the and , even as Irish politicians have jumped on the bandwagon to complain to the White House about Culleton’s case. Irish groups in America are still advocating for “a glimmer of hope” for his release. The penny drops slowly.
As I previously wrote, when your exemplars are exposed, “they do not merely damage one case - they weaken every legitimate claim that follow and make the truth easier to dismiss.” It is thus no coincidence that right-wing publications are gleefully reporting on Culleton’s true character.
In their rush to advocate, RTÉ and the Irish media failed the public and in turn have failed the thousands of people detained in and deported from America to countries much poorer, much less safe and much less familiar than Ireland - people of darker skin, who are unable to ring up RTÉ’s programme and chat with obliging host Kieran Cuddihy.
As Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710: “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect."
Never more true in the deeply integrated world we live in, when partisan media gladly seize on other headlines which suit their narratives.
But I can also be wrong.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the rush to performative judgement by Queens University and the US-Ireland Alliance to strip George Mitchell of his honours and effectively eliminate their associations with him, despite his tremendous work in negotiating the Northern Ireland Peace Process - all because his name appeared in the Epstein files (but never in direct incriminating correspondence).
“You are wrong!”
Stephanie Ramage is a veteran investigative reporter who is shocked at the “oddly incurious Irish press” over their lack of due diligence on Mitchell’s case.
I was contacted by the Atlanta-based journalist who warned me there was evidence I had not seen about Mitchell. She sent me a copy of an eight-page (redacted) FBI record of a claim by a woman alleging she had sex with George Mitchell at the behest of Jeffrey Epstein.
You can see it for yourself on the official United States Department of Justice website: www.justice.gov/epstein. Search for file reference EFTA01248273.
As Ramage pointed out: “It took me less than 20 minutes to find the FBI’s deposition of a woman who said she was pimped to former US Senate majority leader George Mitchell by sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein”. So, she asks, why are the Irish media so deaf to this document?
According to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, “'I don't see what George Mitchell is being accused of, it's not clear to me”. While, the most that newspapers report is of “references to Mr Mitchell in the latest Epstein files” and mention of “apparent attempts to arrange a meeting with the former US senator in 2013”.
RTÉ claims that “the latest Epstein files released on Friday includes emails which appear to suggest that attempts were made by Epstein to organise meetings between the two men - in 2010 and 2013”, but no mention of file EFTA01248273.
Obviously, Mitchell is innocent in law, irrespective of the contents of this FBI interview summary dated December 2, 2020, regarding an interview conducted on August 21, 2020 (the same day that Mitchell was reportedly starting treatment for leukaemia). It contains unverified allegations which the FBI deemed not fit for prosecution.
Yet, the document (which, incidentally, is not a deposition) clearly contains details which directly contradict Mitchell’s denials of any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. In fact, they could not be less contradictory.
So Ramage took me to task for “repeating the reports that give credence and currency to the lie that it is 'unclear' what Mitchell is accused of”.
Which is fair enough. I did. I could have checked the public access Epstein files by typing in George Mitchell’s name. There are 295 results. So, I’m pretty certain I would not have found that record. I’m also not an investigative reporter, I relied on paid journalists to do the analysis for me.
Irrespective of the validity or otherwise of this controversial document, Irish reporters should have mentioned its existence and explained why it was not relevant to the discussion around Mitchell.
And thus we are back to the Irish media’s rush to advocate, more than investigate the facts. And that is true whether I’m right or wrong.
