THE EDITOR OF The Ditch, Eoghan McNeill, has disputed claims by Tánaiste Micheál Martin that the website isn’t “an independent media platform at all” and questioned its political motivations.

Speaking in the Dáil during Leaders’ Questions on Thursday, Martin accused the site of presenting stories in a “selective and distorted way” and questioned where alleged money for paid ads was coming from.

“If you look at that whole campaign and how its organised over the last week, it deserves analysis. The trending, the buildup, the hashtags, the algorithms,” Martin said, before accused The Ditch of attacking other media.

McNeill, who founded the website with Paddy Cosgrave and Chay Bowes, denied claims by Martin on RTÉ’s This Week programme today.

“The first reaction would be one of frustration. Listening to that clip there, you think, ‘alright, thanks Micheál, do you have anything to say about the actual story that we published?’”

“I think a lot of what he said, I’ve called it a heady mix of ignorance and arrogance. Talking about things like hashtags, which we don’t use, talking about paid ads, which we’ve never paid for.”

Junior minister Niall Collins has insisted that he didn’t break any rules after reporting by The Ditch showed that Limerick County Council land was sold to his wife 15 years ago.

The website previously uncovered issues about property ownership that ultimately led to the resignations of ministers Robert Troy and Damien English. 

McNeill said that Martin’s comments about how The Ditch’s stories were publicised were untrue.

“We promote our stories by publishing them on our website and then posting them on Twitter. And that’s about the height of it. There was a huge public interest in the story,” he said.

He also took issue with Martin’s view that The Ditch engages in “extraordinary full frontal attacks on the national broadcaster” and other media for not following up on the website’s stories.

“I have criticized the occasional individual journalists, but we have never attacked any media organisation. We’re very appreciative of times when the more established players do cover our stories, and I’m here talking to you! We don’t engage in those kinds of attacks,” McNeill stated.

Ownership

When asked about the funding of The Ditch, McNeill said that money generated by subscribers was “in the four figures” and that WebSummit, which is owned by Paddy Cosgrave, was expected to donate 1 million euro over the next five years.

McNeill added that he believes transparency around the funding of media organisations is important but “startup media organisations are sometimes held to a higher standard in this regard” than establishment media.

Host Justin McCarthy asked if McNeill agreed with Cosgrave’s view that there should be a change of government.

“Yes. I think a lot of journalists in mainstream outlets would also think that. I’m just being honest about the fact that I do think that,” he replied, adding that Cosgrave has no influence on The Ditch’s reporting.

“We do believe that landholdings and what properties that people own, we think that that’s a real signifier of where power lies.”

McCarthy said: “The Tánaiste says that Paddy Cosgrave’s objective is to take down the government, is that a fair representation do you think, of one of your backers?”

“I think you’d have to ask Paddy about it,” McNeill said.

“Since he was a teenager, he’s been into transparency and accountability. If that transparency and accountability brings down a government, I think that’s kind of melodramatic a little bit.”

Dáil privilege

Martin’s remarks about The Ditch were protected by Dáil privilege, which shields members of the Dáil from possible defamation when they speak in the Dáil chamber.

The Irish Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Séamus Dooley, told The Journal that he believed Martin’s use of Dáil privilege to speak about The Ditch was “not acceptable”. 

McNeill told RTÉ that he believed Martin had largely avoided speaking about him or his colleague at The Ditch Roman Shortall, who are responsible for the website’s output.

“He abused Dáil privilege to make slanderous attacks on both Roman and I, which I want to be very clear on, he hasn’t repeated,” McNeill said.

“I actually do believe in a free press, I’m not going to run to a lawyer and I would love for him to just go and say stand over it.”

“I was just thinking, ‘okay, great, do you have anything to say about me or Roman? Or are you going to try to tarnish us by association?’ Even though he had the protection of Dáil privilege he wasn’t even comfortable making an actual straightforward statement of fact about us.”