The inconvenient truth for bosses in the news media is that Fianna Fáil’s hiring of Ivan Yates as a communication coach has been public knowledge for almost four years.
The Irish Daily Mail reported on January 2nd, 2022, that the party’s head of communications, Siobhán Russell, had recruited the former Fine Gael minister and bookie. It quoted Fianna Fáil Senator Fiona O’Loughlin as saying the training “was certainly worthwhile”.
Ten days later, the Clare Echo reported that local TD Cathal Crowe had attended a three-hour Fianna Fáil workshop on media interview skills given by Yates. “He was a hardball interviewer himself,” the paper quoted Crowe. “He played out interview scenarios with those of us in attendance.”
The national airwaves have been crackling with journalists demanding to know why Fianna Fáil did not inform its Coalition partner that it employed Yates to train its presidential candidate, Jim Gavin.
The bigger question of why national broadcasting bosses kept trotting Yates out as a suppos
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