News media plays a dual role in society of both informant and influence, with a shifting overlap based upon internal and external factors. Simultaneously, powerful parties within society can often exert influence over media, news inclusive - raising a question of how this relationship may in turn affect news portrayals of actors within these parties. This research project set out to examine Irish newspaper articles to deduce whether a primary ‘powerful party’ throughout Ireland’s history, the Christian order, and its branches, held sway over the portrayals of order members accused or charged of committing harm. Through a content analysis of one hundred news articles over a sixty-year period, with an even focus split between members of a Christian order and non-members, it was determined that Irish news media did show bias in favour of order members through several means such as inclusion of information, tone and language, amongst others. the significance of this finding is discussed within its own context and in the wider contexts of media and power within society, with considerations of cyclical inequality, labelling, norms, and wider social structures, alongside the plausibility of change in society’s approach to news media, as this study’s results highlight an issue which is only exacerbated by the modern-day relationship between powerful actors and media.