Paul Williams recently put out yet another sensationalist gangland tv show on TV3. He glorifies crime and propels criminals to an almost ‘celebrity’ status in his sensational trash tv shows and newspaper junk.

Gangsters at War by Paul Williams is a gritty title for what should be called ‘Keeping up with the Kinahans;’ Ireland’s answer to ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians.’ The fact of the matter is that nobody needs to know what these people eat for dinner or where they shop for fashion. Nobody needs to know these things and Paul Williams and all the garbage that comes out in newspapers and television programmes just feeds into an unhealthy obsession with gossip and materialism.

Quality journalism that deals with criminal information should be focused more on cold facts and statistics rather than bad boy nicknames and designer fashion trends. Organized (or disorganized?) criminals have become media superstars thanks to entities like Williams & Co. Dramatized attention only inflates the egos of these unlawful individuals; such people should not be catapulted to fame. The media should really stop catapulting them to fame.

Funny how TV3 can reveal the identity of an alleged drug dealer that lives all the way over in Spain and yet they don’t expose the identities of any media personnel that are snorting the Kinahan’s cocaine behind the scenes of their very own tv studios. Funnier yet is that Paul Williams claims to know somebody that saw a celebrity gangster named ‘Fat Freddy’ mowing the lawn of the Kinahan’s front garden; surprise surprise there is no evidence to support this claim and even if there was who the hell needs to know that kind of gossip anyway? It has the ring of a rumor that was fabricated (by the media) to stir the pot and embarrass dangerous criminals. Publishing unsupported claims like that is snide and childish.

In all reality, if Paul Williams really gave a damn about the victims of “drug crime” he’d be campaigning to decriminalize drugs because until that happens nothing will ever change. It will probably just continue to get worse as it has done ever since drugs were criminalized in the first place, aeons ago. A lot of people (like myself) are sick of being bombarded with gangland gossip. It’s the same old broken record playing over and over again. It never seems to alter anything or go anywhere and it would be nice to hear a new song for a change.