[Kreuzberger]

Oh, it's a great big game of look over there.

Isn't the BelTel's entire business model and social ethos based on being firmly rooted in the centre ground?

(As I point out ever-more regularly, I have been out of of these things for a while.)

[MisterMuncher]

It's shifted a fair bit into Nolan-esque shock-dickery, and a general Orange hue. It's not doing well at all, it's pretty much living on ad revenue and free distribution. I couldn't for the life of me remember actually buying it.

It's rivals aren't much better. The Irish News is ok at times, very much the SDLP of papers. The News Letter jumped from UUP to DUP and kept running. Andytown News is pretty much An Phoblacht lite. Local papers are dire for the most part, a couple of generic papers with a bit of local colour inserted, or zombie sheets that just keep reporting cattle escapes and the GAA club/Parade scenes according to preference. The Sundays are worse than you'd believe, the sensationalism and nonsense of the English Sunday tabs applied to paramilitary figures. It's all grim.

[Kreuzberger]

I am genuinely really quite disappointed to Harare that. I watched the first color editions roll in the reconstructed press plant, toured the Shankhill And the Falls Roads and ate magnificent sea food at Carlingford Lough one week back in, I think, maybe '85 and all under the watchful eye of one Mike McCann. He is / was one of the loveliest people in the business. Went on to be CEO at Ulster TV.

That even-handed Formular was a gold mine, back in the day. For context, I have been doing this Internet bollocks since '95 but I can still see a role for the BelTel as a sensible parish pump, regardless of your stripe.

[spoonman]

Northern Irish local newspapers are generally quite parochial, and mostly lean to one "side" or the other, though some do give at least some lip service to appear a wee bit balanced.

Of the "big three" the Irish News is perhaps the most reasonable in their reporting though it has an unashamed moderate Nationalist stance that stops it from being positioned as a cross-community read, and it does succumb to doing the odd sensational spiel from time to time. The BeleTele years ago would have been mainly regarded as having a moderately liberal "garden centre" unionist stance not dissimilar to the likes of ex-UUP leader Mike Nesbitt, but otherwise had a notable readership in nationalist areas (though behind the Irish News) and was about as close as you could have to an NI newspaper of record. The last few years though has seen it go down the tubes in terms of journalistic quality and become a DUP mouthpeice/apologist, gaining a nickname "The Daily Gail" after its current editor and the journalistic standards of another newspaper that I'm positive everyone here is familiar with. The other one, the Newsletter, has had a strong unionist stance for as long as anyone can remember, and that isn't going to change.

As for the report in question, my neighbour was born & grew up in Moygashel. I think it's safe to say they got the fuck outta there in time. Where else would you find public memorials to a terrorist who blew himself to bits trying to plant a bomb in the back of an Irish showband's minibus?

[MisterMuncher]

I grew up pretty close to Moygashel myself. As a lad I worked with a few of the locals in a brick factory. Yeah. It wasn't a whole lot better back then.

"Are you in a band mate?"
"Yeah"
"Flute?"
"Death Metal".