Behind the headlines: Media coverage of social exclusion in Limerick City - The case of Moyross

In a media setting, and within the public mind, Ireland's 'Third City' has acquired an intensely negative reputation over time.¹ While there are many historical precedents for the maligning of the place's image, it is generally agreed that it reached a new low within media practice in the 1980s with the ascription, in some media quarters, of the label 'Stab City' to Limerick. The blanket representation of Limerick as a place of crime, social disorder, poverty and social exclusion has continued, and it has been amplified in recent years, particularly in the context of the feuds between rival drugs gangs, most of which have been played out in the city's marginalised local authority estates such as Moyross, St Mary's Park, Southill and Ballinacurra Weston. Understandably, a variety of interest groups have expressed concern over the ways in which Limerick generally and marginalised areas in particular have been misrepresented by the mass media.².