Power, politics and the press

The controversy surrounding INM raises some uncomfortable questions about politics and the media in Ireland

Leslie Buckley, then chairman of INM, and Robert Pitt, then chief executive of INM, at an extraordinary general meeting of the company at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin in December 2016. Pitt made a protected disclosure about INM under whistleblower legislation to the ODCE Pic: Fergal Phillips

To some, it reads like an exciting corporate espionage thriller. To others, it’s an over-complicated drama that has consumed only those in the so-called media bubble.

But the story involving the country’s biggest newspaper group, Independent News & Media (INM), goes to the heart of the relationship between the press, power and politics.

It is a relationship where an independent press, free from interference and with the right to defend the sources of ...