When the negative politics of Stormont contaminate the positive framing of news about organ donation
Recent coverage of organ donation in Northern Ireland has been merging during several weeks with the political paralysis of the country's assembly that started in May last year . In a nutshell, Northern Ireland Assembly's has not convened to agree the final steps needed to implement the opt-out law for organ donation from spring 2023 . While the UK Parliament is now going to make an exceptional intervention so the law can be enacted, the entanglement with a fully unrelated conflict that stems from Brexit holds in my view valuable lessons to reflect on how organ donation is discussed in today's media landscape. As suggested in a previous post , mainstream news about organ donation have increasingly involved families making some form of political pressure (or activism?) so opt-out frameworks for organ donation are implemented. The coverage had provided welcome photo opportunities for politicians. Organ donation moves into the dark of the news spectrum Early in Janua