Newswire goes quiet for longer than 10 minutes

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday April 07, 2003 13:38 by Ticket in the brim of my hat

Meant in a jocular spirit

When Bush and Blair come to town, the channels of communication go quiet.

In a slightly interesting development this afternoon, Indymedia's newswire service went without a single posting for almost two hours. Reports say that tumbleweed has been seen blowing through the vast headquarters of the multimedia organisation on Stephen's Green this afternoon. Many postings went unnoticed and unreplied to at the time of writing. Usual posters are said to be concerned at the lack of political invective in the last number of hours.

The newswire, known for its insightful political analysis and considered lack of political back-biting, was previously being bombarded by messages and news items from as far afield as Stillorgan and Drimnagh. Recently, the service has seen a flurry of activity around the US-led invasion of Iraq and the use of Shannon for refuelling but this morning, all was quiet. It is thought by some commentators that this might indicate a vast migration northward by the usual posters for an important gathering.

Although the President of the US is due to touch down in Belfast at some stage this afternoon, many close to Executive Director for Internal Affairs Eamonn Crudden have noted that this absence of commentary from the wire service serves as a reminder of the Dublin-centred nature of much of the news. An inside source close to Crudden denied this however.

In a related move, many thousands of cheering and happy protestors left Dublin centre and other points around the city this morning to converge on Belfast for a national protest although some on the left were concerned that confusion about which nation was holding the protest persisted.