In Sarah Carey’s final piece for the Irish Times she explains her role in the Moriarty tribunal, however, far from apologising for the acts she is criticised for in the report, she sought to trivialise them.

It’s been so long since the last post I thought I’d forget how to do this. But this very short piece had been sitting in draft form for several weeks now, as other ‘real life’ stuff took precedence. Having tidied it up, it’s now just about worth posting…

I had initially thought on reading Carey’s final piece for the Irish Times that it had been on her own initaitive, in fact I just presumed it. There would be nothing particularly surprising about Carey opting to use her column in the Irish Times to address the serious issues raised by the Moriarty tribunal and to talk about herself.

After all, Carey’s relationship with the tribunal and Denis O’Brien have over the years been the subject of a number of her Irish Times articles, 5 to be precise (out of a total of over 100). A search of her popular, now defunct blog, GUBU, reveals 80 entries relating to O’Brien (albeit some only raise his name in the comments section). Her relatively short spell as his assistant over 10 years ago clearly had a significant effect on her.

Yet this initial assumption was incorrect. It later transpired in her resignation statement that she was forced to make the tribunal the subject of the piece by the editor, which explains why she began with the line:

“Today I have to write about me and my mention in the Moriarty report”

And it is the first indication about how Carey intended to frame the story: as if she is a school child forced to write lines on the blackboard. Again, with ‘black spot on record’ Carey appears to be invoking the idea of a ‘black mark’ on a school record, a symbolic method of punishment. Again, when she reveals that she was responsible for the leak to her solicitor she says “I was the culprit”. A sort of faux seriousness, she obviously doesn’t consider it a crime, it was a ‘righteous leak’. So the idea of her being a ‘culprit’, plays into the frame of her as a child being reprimanded by a teacher.

But, going back to the editors role in this piece. Carey begins the piece with a long history about her role and the tribunal in general. It is not until the end of the article that Carey reveals the significance of the article; she is to reveal that she lied to the tribunal. Therefore whoever chose the headline wanted the article turned on its head. This was not the article the editor had requested.