Cowen: Poleaxed By A Little Bird?

When Brian Cowen took to the airwaves last week for an interview on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland sounding hoarse and, frankly, more than a little worse for wear, the effect was dramatic. Normally, the subject might not have got traction, unless it happened to be an especially slow day on the news desks. On this occasion, however, a Tweet by Fine Gael’s Cork-based TD Simon Coveney to the effect that the Taoiseach sounded halfway between ‘drunk and hungover’ gave the story legs. Suddenly, a cloth-tongued interview became a global phenomenon, with the result that the Taoiseach’s grip on power seems to have weakened considerably. So does the Brian Cowen ‘Twitter-gate’ Affair mark a turning point in Irish politics?

Until recently, the fact is that most Irish politicians lived in blissful ignorance of the popular social-networking site Twitter. There were some, of course, like Willie O’Dea, who were all too familiar with it: the Limerick Fianna Fáil TD chose to ignore the charge of perjury potentially hanging over his head, instead blaming Dan Boyle’s Twitter feed for costing him his job as Minister of Defence.
But his resignation was nothing compared to the reaction to Coveney’s Twitter comment, which was apparently quoted in over 400 articles in international newspapers the following day.
“God, what an uninspiring interview by Taoiseach this morning,” Coveney opined. “He sounded half way between drunk and hungover and totally disinterested…”
Some might see accusing the Taoiseach of drunkenness as an act of national sabotage, which in itself will almost certainly cost the country millions of euro in additional interest payments on our already over-sized national debt. But the Cork South Central TD remains defiant.
“I don’t regret it at all as it’s what most people were thinking,” he says. “It was a gut reaction to a very poor performance from the Taoiseach because, like most people, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
Coveney is also keen to point out that, despite the allegations from Fianna Fáil, his Tweet was anything but party political.
“If I wanted to make a political statement I’d have issued a press release through the Fine Gael press office. I didn’t consult anyone in Fine Gael before writing the tweet. It was honestly just my immediate response to what I was hearing.”
Of course, this is one of the perils of tweeting. Too many people put the first thought that comes into their heads into the public domain, often without fully comprehending the naked, un-nuanced nature of the medium.
“I only had 150 followers at the time (he now has over 1,500 – S.O’R) and so I never saw this reaction coming,” Coveney admits. “That’s why I was reluctant to talk to the media about it, unlike my colleagues in Fianna Fáil, who used it to distract from the issue at hand, which was Brian Cowen’s performance.”

A CORK THING
The Labour Party spokesperson on finance, Joan Burton TD, is quick to defend Simon Coveney, indicating that the view that the Taoiseach was suffering from the effects of a late night was put to her almost as soon as the interview was broadcast.
“I happened to be listening to it live on the way into town, and by the time I got to the Dáil several people, older people who wouldn’t be familiar with Twitter, were remarking how disgraceful the performance of the Taoiseach was,” she reflects.
“So the issue shouldn’t be Simon Coveney’s tweet, it should be Brian Cowen’s interview. He was working as Taoiseach, doing what should have been a professional interview – but, instead, he gave an impression of Ireland that really let the country down.
“The fact is that it was news because of Brian Cowen, not Simon Coveney,” she adds. “However, politicians should realise that, with sites like Twitter, an awful lot of news now happens in real time, and information or comments that wouldn’t have been picked up by the media before are now making the news.”
According to social media expert Damien Mulley, that is the lesson politicians need to learn.
“When the interview was broadcast, lots of people claimed to be the first to tweet about Brian Cowen’s alleged state. The fact is that politicians like Simon Coveney are going to have far more reach and authority than members of the general public.
“Politicians represent a large number of people, so when they speak, it’s inevitable that news organisations will pay attention, especially as most of their Twitter followers are journalists.”
Joan Burton agrees. “An awful lot of politicians are using Twitter as a form of informal press release, one that doesn’t go through their party’s press office,” she observes. “They do so in the knowledge that an awful lot of the people following them are journalists and will pick up on what they say.
“You only have to look at Dan Boyle, whose lead Simon followed – actually, maybe it’s a Cork thing (laughs) – as an example of someone on the Government side who uses Twitter as an outlet for political statements.”
Damien Mulley is concerned that there may now be a push by Government to regulate Twitter, with Willie O’Dea using both a Late Late Show appearance and his weekly newspaper column to call on politicians to stop using the site.
“The establishment don’t like things that show them in a bad light,” Mulley says. “Look at Dermot Morgan and Scrap Saturday. When the Fianna Fáil government took power, it was the first show to be removed from the schedule. Having said that, I don’t think any move to regulate the use of Twitter will work, as it boils down to freedom of speech.”
Simon Coveney defends the use of the site. “Why shouldn’t politicians use Twitter to interact with the public?” he asks. “Lots of politicians, like Willie O’Dea, use newspapers, radio and television to make partisan political statements that have probably gone through their party’s political advisors. Doesn’t that make Twitter a more honest means of interaction?”
Perhaps. But it may yet prove to be a minefield, unless people are really smart about how they use it. And somehow, one suspects that this may be too much to expect of Irish politicians in general.
Watch this space...