How can a Prime Time report on #MaryBoyle fail to even recognize work done by Gemma O’Doherty?

~ jlpagano

Last night there was a report on the national broadcaster RTÉ on the disappearance 40 years ago of Mary Boyle in Donegal.

At the end, David McCullagh provides phone numbers for members of the public should  there be any further information about the case they would like to share.  Perhaps we should ring the numbers and suggest they watch the entensive documentary compiled by freelance journalst Gemma O’Doherty?

Look – this is a tragic situation.  We cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like for the girl’s family since she disappeared.  But one thing is clear – there are two camps within the Boyle family, one led by Mary’s twin sister Ann Doherty who believes there should be a full public inquest into the matter, and one led by the girls’ mother Ann Boyle who does not.

The piece put together by Barry Cummins is clearly biased towards the mother’s wishes.  It makes passing reference to the sister’s wishes and there is even a claim made that she “declined an offer to participate” (paraphrase)…personally I think she was wise not to do so.

For me, Cummins offered absolutely nothing new to the case, rehashing the events surrounding her disappearance with an incredible amount of time devoted to the search, and very little time spent covering the quest for answers (basically it amounted to “The gardaí are on it”).

Instead of asking Gemma O’Doherty on to explain her own investigations, the show instead skims over the topics she covers before mischievously linking some horrendous threatening letters received by Ann Boyle to “social media”, which is where O’Doherty’s work can be found; also it is where she offered many rebuttal’s to the Prime Time segment…

I cannot say who is right and who is wrong, but I will say this…my impression before watching Prime Time was that there were forces at work more concerned in protecting public figures than they were in finding out what happened to Mary Boyle.  That impression had not changed by the time McCullagh was reading out the phone numbers. JLP

#IANWAE