Offering perks to the media won’t make them say nice things about Limerick
Whilst travelling today I caught a brief news report about a member of Limerick Chamber of Commerse offering an invitation to national media editors to stay in Limerick for the weekend so that they will get “a different perspective” of Limerick.
It would be my belief that this would not work.
The cancer that is the “stab city” moniker that Limerick has, and it’s rep for being a bit of a shithole is not so much being spread by the media as much as it once was. You might get some ingoramus comment from the likes of Brendan O’Connor of the Sunday Independent or an off the cuff remark about Thomond Park being a knifes throw from the city centre, but of late, the media has been for the most part factual in it’s reporting of Limerick City.
Where I see the problem more nowadays is in personal blogs and holiday journals, and were it not for these types of online media, it would probably go un-noticed.
More and more often one can find some travel journal where in international visitor to the country is told by the driver of a private bus company, or even Bus Eireann, that Limerick is known as “Stab City.” There are also those that would hear the slur from hotel receptionists and other representatives in the tourist industry who, should in all honesty, be more professional.
Limerick Ireland, well we found out that this place was a not so safe place, and I didn’t want to scare any of you, but the nickname for this place known by almost everyone as “Stab City”. So we actually ended up cutting our trip there a day short,
So this tourist cut their trip to Limerick a day short because the citizenry of this country felt the need to bad-mouth the city.
So we left early Saturday and drove to Killarney via Limerick (aka “Stab City”). We had lunch there, then drove the 1st half of the Ring of Kerry to Portmagee (photos still to come), finding Ballycarbery Castle on the way.
Using blogsearch on google will pull up loads more examples of tourists being told by native Irish as well as professionals whose job it is to promote the country badmouthing the city. Give it a try.
So rather than wining and dining newspaper editors who will take what they can get and continue doing what they are doing there needs to be a different approach.
A campaign needs to be set up to name and shame any tourist professional, be it a state owned or private enterprise, who allows it’s employees to smear the city. These could be identified by way of making private contact with those who write these blog posts. Once the offending organisations are known, they could be contacted and given an opportunity to respond. If the response is unsatisfactory, they would be “outed.”
With regard to newspapers, be they local, national or international, or even magazines that use the slur, these two could be identified and asked for a response.
Were someone like the Limerick Co-Ordination office to set up such a campaign, they would be able to get interested parties to pool their resources. Surely the likes of Limerick Leader, Limerick Post, Limerick Independent, Live 95FM with their researchers and numerous readers and listeners would be able to submit examples of smears being used in both regional papers around the country as well as national papers.
The US based website, Media Matters for America, has been doing a great job of presenting inaccuracies in the US media from the right-wing broadcasters and publications in that country. Something on a similar line could be done for Limerick. There would be not too many companies willing to be associated with negativity.
Pleasuring the media hacks of the likes of the Independent or the Times will accomplish bugger all. “Please don’t write bad things about us” won’t work. “Write smears about us and we will embarras you” would work better.