The 2007 financial crisis and consequent programme of austerity brought deep disruption to Irish politics and exasperated public hostility towards mainstream politics and so-called elites. As the 2016 Irish General Election marked a historic low in support for established parties, this chapter examines the extent to which Irish news media inflamed populist and anti-political sentiment. Within the context of intensified mediatization (Mazzoleni, Mediatization of Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014) and widespread disaffection with political institutions, we expect to find that particular types of media, specifically tabloid and new digital media, enable anti-elite populist messaging by reflecting a higher tendency towards strategic game frames and personalization. However, we find that although the strategic game frame dominates coverage, only 2 per cent of stories reference any form of elitism and only 12 per cent manifest a definite populist rhetoric. These findings are discussed in terms of the prevailing values of professional journalism norms in Irish media.