There’s a direct logical connection. The mechanism is easily abused. Mark everything as confidential and what happens? The headline becomes true. Why? Because criticism will necessarily require leaking confidential information.

This particular headline makes an honest appeal to your emotions.

And what prevents that everything is declared confidential?

It's more complicated than that, because the DPC has to give the information to the specific person before it can instruct them not to leak it, though that doesn't completely eliminate the potential for abuse.

The US FTC has the same power, except the instruction must be signed by an in-house judge and the proposed amendment should have a similar safeguard.

If the headline was something like "Irish Gov Proposes Law With Inadequate Safeguards", I'd agree with it, but "Irish Gov Makes Critizising Big Tech and Irish DPC a Crime" is a false statement.