Poor quality of Irish economic journalism

Cody Pomeray

Does anyone else find the quality of reporting in the Irish media to be extremely lacking, often littered with factual errors and ambiguities, and sometimes very misleading?

Maybe this thread might be used for people to highlight their own examples of really shoddy economic reporting.

Mine is from today's Indo.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/one-in-seven-people-on-the-dole-has-never-worked-a-single-day-29278033.html

The journalist clearly doesn't understand, or else doesn't care about the difference between jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit, he uses the term 'jobseekers benefit' to refer to all unemployment payments.

Next, he gathers the total number of (presumably JA) welfare recipients the live register who "have never worked" and makes them a fraction of the QNHS figures to determine the non-participation rate:eek: These are two completely sets of data, not to be mixed up with one another. Pretty basic mistake.

All he had to do was count the JA recipients on the live register who have never worked and divide them by the total number of JA recipients on the live register (JB should be left out of it, those people have contributed PRSI), he should then have broken it down by age group to take account of those who are likely to be recent graduates/ school leavers.

He then says that these people, who have never worked, are all entitled to the full rate. Again, the dogs in the street know that people under the age of 25 on Jobseekers' Allowance (of whom there are about 63,000!) would only be entitled to between €100 - €144. I imagine this age group makes up a lot of the population who have never been able to work.

I know that Daniel McConnell, the journalist in this case, isn't considered an economic heavyweight, but how does this stuff get past an editor?

I hope this doesn't become a debate about unemployment, because there is another serious issue here, and that is the really poor quality of economic journalism that exists in this country.

Has anyone else felt this way about the 'serious' media outlets. Any personal favourite clangers of your own?

Scofflaw

Poor economic journalism, poor political journalism, poor scientific journalism. Repeated failures to distinguish, for example, between the EU and the ECHR, an inability to handle statistical significance, cherry-picking of facts, completely uncritical repetition of unsourced factoids, you name it, they're all there.

There are relatively few articles on complex topics in Irish journalism - and not just Irish journalism - which bear proper analysis without showing gaping holes in the author's comprehension and/or fact-checking abilities.

Having said that, complex topics are, well, complex. Economic issues can be particularly inscrutable, because unlike the sciences, there isn't always a clear line between a political opinion and an economic theory. But there's no such excuse for the failure you highlight.

cordially,
Scofflaw

maninasia

What about this lovely piece from the Indo. Because the source was the World Bank they didn't deem it necessary to check how they actually put these figures together. Or perhaps that was beyond their intellectual capacity to understand.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/nigerians-send-nearly-500m-a-year-home-from-ireland-29278045.html

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=84697764

AlmightyCushion

How many newspapers/news sites picked up that story about Ireland paying 42% of the whole cost of bailing out EU banks? Says it all really. Same with all the news stories about how Ireland is swimming in oil but the government decided to give it all away to some oil companies for a few grand in brown envelopes.

I think the problem is not that a lot of people take everything they read at face value and to be 100% accurate (as long as it's not completely ridiculous), they're far too trusting. Because of this journalistic quality doesn't need to be that high, they don't need to all that accurate because few will pick up on it and question them on it. I don't think this is an Irish problem or even one related to just economics, some of the technology stories I've read on technology sites (siliconrepublic I'm looking at you) have been laughably poor.

Scofflaw

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

How many newspapers/news sites picked up that story about Ireland paying 42% of the whole cost of bailing out EU banks? Says it all really.

Exactly - repetition of a dramatic statistic without bothering to check how the statistic came about, who put it out, and what agenda they might have.

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Same with all the news stories about how Ireland is swimming in oil but the government decided to give it all away to some oil companies for a few grand in brown envelopes.

Not only that, but that despite that complete giveaway the oil companies still pretend there's no oil there in order to...something or other. Trick people, perhaps, just to laugh at them.

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I think the problem is not that a lot of people take everything they read at face value and to be 100% accurate (as long as it's not completely ridiculous), they're far too trusting. Because of this journalistic quality doesn't need to be that high, they don't need to all that accurate because few will pick up on it and question them on it. I don't think this is an Irish problem or even one related to just economics, some of the technology stories I've read on technology sites (siliconrepublic I'm looking at you) have been laughably poor.

Argh, I'd forgotten about technology journalism.

grinding my teeth,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

maninasia wrote: »

What about this lovely piece from the Indo. Because the source was the World Bank they didn't deem it necessary to check how they actually put these figures together. Or perhaps that was beyond their intellectual capacity to understand.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/nigerians-send-nearly-500m-a-year-home-from-ireland-29278045.html

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=84697764

Yes, that's a classic - as was an earlier story about how much asylum seekers make. I thought there was going to be something odd in the figures.

If I'm right about what sock puppet says there, those figures are estimated using a very simplistic model - take the total remitted home by Nigerians abroad, weight the number of Nigerians living abroad by the GNI per capita of the state they're resident in, and divide the former by the latter to give figures per Nigerian according to the GNI of the country they're living in.

Using such a model tells you nothing about whether Nigerians in Ireland are remitting anything unusual home - it tells you only about the model's assumptions. In fact, it turns out, unsurprisingly, that the amount per capita the Nigerians send home is almost identical to Irish GNI/capita. Diving the product by one of two multipliers yields the other multiplier - who knew?

Of course, once I've figured that out, I no longer have an article to sell...hmm.

cordially,
Scofflaw

professore

Hard facts don't sell newspapers. Inaccurately interpreted statistics and reports do.

charlemont

Our media can barely give an accurate road number on traffic related articles..

I see the Gardaí were looking for anyone with information about a recent death to come forward, All papers covered this but they done it the Irish way, Not one single picture of the man which may have jogged someone's memory !!!

Court reporting is atrocious here too, Full of mistakes and omissions.

Most of these journalists would never last in the same job outside of Ireland.

Scofflaw

Actually, that thread illustrates an equally if not more disturbing trend - people are happily saying that this issue "will be brought up in the Dáil", and I don't see any reason to think that's not possible or even likely.

Seeing the holes in this kind of stuff isn't my day job - but it is supposed to the day job of both the media and our TDs.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Corkbah

charlemont wrote: »

Our media can barely give an accurate road number on traffic related articles..

I see the Gardaí were looking for anyone with information about a recent death to come forward, All papers covered this but they done it the Irish way, Not one single picture of the man which may have jogged someone's memory !!!

Court reporting is atrocious here too, Full of mistakes and omissions.

Most of these journalists would never last in the same job outside of Ireland.

got any examples of that in national newspapers ?? - most of the court reporters I know report the facts of what was actually said in court - not what plaintiffs claim.

KyussBishop

In fairness, it's hard to find good economic writing from any mainstream journalistic outlet, because the vast majority of economic writing on macroeconomic issues, is based on theory that is just flat-out wrong.

Take the fuss over that austerity study recently, how it was used to promote austerity, yet is extremely flawed; economics as a field of study itself, is in a miserable pseudo-scientific state, and the small number of voices trying to bring the field back to reality (to actually start trying to make theory fit evidence again), are marginalized and gaining ground only very slowly.

RichardAnd

It seems to me that journalism here, and elsewhere I might add, is not at all a matter of ensuring that the truth reaches the masses. Rather, I would claim that economic journalism at least, is intended to rile up the plebs, sowing the seeds of disunity at the behest of those who pull the strings.

It's ironic really, in an age where, in theory, all human knowledge is available at the click of a mouse, people are so easily led astray. Humans eh, what a strange breed they are.

notharrypotter

Most people accept by and large what is put forward by reputable journalists simply because they have no detailed knowledge of that area.

Its only when it impinges on an area that they have knowledge of that they question the lack of detailed knowledge of the journalist.

Actually, that thread illustrates an equally if not more disturbing trend - people are happily saying that this issue "will be brought up in the Dáil", and I don't see any reason to think that's not possible or even likely.

In my opinion many members of Lenister House lack the required knowledge to examine anything in any great detail.

carpejugulum

You can cross 'Irish economic' out of the title.

Ironically, it's a supply/demand issue.

ardmacha

Journalism, like politics, in Ireland is a profession with little self respect. No journalist sees any loss of self respect in producing a biased article with inaccurate information and no newspaper sees any market advantage in properly researched articles.

Chips Lovell

I think the problem is twofold. Media organisations are squeezed and reporters are expected to produce more in less time. Standards are starting to slip.

Secondly, there's been a bit of an uptick in agenda driven journalism, where stories that suit a certain viewpoint are pushed out by editors without too much care for inconvenient facts.

ardmacha wrote: »

no newspaper sees any market advantage in properly researched articles.

The cynic in me thinks that's because there isn't any market advantage in running quality stuff. Look at what some of the best selling papers are. There's a lot of people out there who just want to be told what they want to hear.

maninasia

Many articles are simply assembled quotes from press releases.
That's not journalism, that's marketing.

RichardAnd

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

There's a lot of people out there who just want to be told what they want to hear.

I'd agree with this as I believe that it appeals to a very human need, the need for stability. The reason religion has appealed to people (and still does appeal, I might add) is because it offers that comfort that there is something higher that is looking out for you in a very hostile world. The alternative is to believe that there is nothing "up there" and that humans are at the mercy of nature or, all too often, other humans.

In a way, the modern media is like a religion. Many people simply accept what they are told by "reputable" sources and, like the zealous catholic, they behave in an extremely aggressive manner towards anyone who questions the convenient truth.

Cody Pomeray

ardmacha wrote: »

Journalism, like politics, in Ireland is a profession with little self respect. No journalist sees any loss of self respect in producing a biased article with inaccurate information and no newspaper sees any market advantage in properly researched articles.

I completely disagree.

Ireland consistently produces some really quality journalism of an international calibre which would be appropriate to the BBC or one of the international broadsheets - I'm talking about journalists like Mary FitzGerald, Lara Marlowe, Paul Cunningham, David McCullagh (in fact, most of the political correspondents when reporting on politics) and Philip Boucher Hayes - the Irish media is punching well above its weight in most areas. In fact, we even do well in business and companies journalism,with the likes of Tom Lyons, who sometimes ventures into macro policy. However, when it comes to reporting on economics in general, there is a disturbing willingness to manipulate and misrepresent data. Dan O'Brien is a stark example of this, the guy misrepresents - or outright ignores - economic data as he sees fit.

I understand what some have said about the hybrid-Scientific nature of economics, but that doesn't explain a disproportionate tendency toward impartial or misleading reporting in itself.

The only media outlet that is something of an exception to the rule is probably the Sunday Business Post, and some really great journalists like Ian Kehoe (formerly with SBP), but these are few and far between and it's really a worrying situation for a country facing serious economic challenges.

The Corinthian

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

The cynic in me thinks that's because there isn't any market advantage in running quality stuff. Look at what some of the best selling papers are. There's a lot of people out there who just want to be told what they want to hear.

There's unfortunately more than a grain of truth in this; best exemplified by the British press. Think of who reads papers such as the Daily Mail, or Guardian or Telegraph and you will quickly note very specific socio-political demographic groups. People who hold specific World views tend to buy papers that reinforce rather than challenge those views.

You get such agendas throughout publications, down to the letters page. One former letters editor of an Irish newspaper admitted to me that they would actively pick, for example, two well written letters on one side of a debate and then a letter from some crazy from the other, based upon what side was supported by editorial policy.

Plus opinion pieces are a lot quicker to knock out.

And don't get me started on the topic of media economists.

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Ireland consistently produces some really quality journalism of an international calibre which would be appropriate to the BBC or one of the international broadsheets - I'm talking about journalists like Mary FitzGerald, Lara Marlowe, Paul Cunningham, David McCullagh (in fact, most of the political correspondents when reporting on politics) and Philip Boucher Hayes - the Irish media is punching well above its weight in most areas.

LOL. Would this be the same Philip Boucher-Hayes who is head of RTÉ's Radio Investigative Unit, swallowed Pamela Izevbekhai's asylum scam faster than a $20 blow-job, and then managed to keep his job given he'd proven his competence as an investigative reporter?

Cody Pomeray

The Corinthian wrote: »

LOL. Would this be the same Philip Boucher-Hayes who is head of RTÉ's Radio Investigative Unit, swallowed Pamela Izevbekhai's asylum scam faster than a $20 blow-job, and then managed to keep his job given he'd proven his competence as an investigative reporter?

did you really 'LOL"? Your reference doesn't have a significantly humourous payoff.

The Corinthian

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

did you really 'LOL"? Your reference doesn't have a significantly humourous payoff.

His inclusion as an example of "quality journalism of an international calibre" is actually quite a rib-tickler.

Scofflaw

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

I completely disagree.

Ireland consistently produces some really quality journalism of an international calibre which would be appropriate to the BBC or one of the international broadsheets - I'm talking about journalists like Mary FitzGerald, Lara Marlowe, Paul Cunningham, David McCullagh (in fact, most of the political correspondents when reporting on politics) and Philip Boucher Hayes - the Irish media is punching well above its weight in most areas. In fact, we even do well in business and companies journalism,with the likes of Tom Lyons, who sometimes ventures into macro policy. However, when it comes to reporting on economics in general, there is a disturbing willingness to manipulate and misrepresent data. Dan O'Brien is a stark example of this, the guy misrepresents - or outright ignores - economic data as he sees fit.

I understand what some have said about the hybrid-Scientific nature of economics, but that doesn't explain a disproportionate tendency toward impartial or misleading reporting in itself.

The only media outlet that is something of an exception to the rule is probably the Sunday Business Post, and some really great journalists like Ian Kehoe (formerly with SBP), but these are few and far between and it's really a worrying situation for a country facing serious economic challenges.

There are obviously differences of opinion on the value of economic journalists. I would agree with you in respect of Dan O'Brien, who I have seen commit fairly basic factual errors, but he gets a glowing write-up from Michael Hennigan of Finfacts, who I would generally consider a good source:

"Dan O'Brien, economics editor, does a good job in revealing home truths"

cordially,
Scofflaw

Cody Pomeray

It's funny because i usually agree with the end points Dan O'Brien is making, it's just that he is prone to factual slippage and logical leaps in getting to that end point.

I'm not some economics guru and even I can spot his mistakes, I'm just wondering why this is allowed to happen.

If such errors were happening with a foreign correspondent, for example, there would be substantial and rigorous criticism.In economics, I think we just accept it as a hazard of reading economics articles.

Scofflaw

Well, they're at it again - this time in relation to the current fuss about corporate taxes, Apple, Google, etc. I'm going to quote antoobrien in response to another poster:

antoobrien wrote:

We find out that Apple have a "special tax agreement" with Ireland that means they only pay 2% corporate tax, while we have spent the past few years pretending to the world we have a 12.5% tax rate.

If the apple accounts are published that will likely be proved wrong. They all pay 12.5% on the profit booked here, something the US senators studiously ignored. It's how the profit is reduced by transfer pricing, something that has to be agreed with the SEC up front (google's arrangement was registered in 2003) that they should be focusing.

And Tim Cook told them to change their taxation scheme if they want to get "their" cash "home".

Edit: I wrote a piece about this in a different thread before, which has a link to the 2009 google financial accounts.

They made a profit of €47,415,556, piad CT of €5,926,945. That works out at 12.5%. They also paid other taxes of approx €12m.

The problem is that some idiot read the revenue figure 7.868bn without looking at the cost of sales 2.355bn or the administrative costs of 5.46bn to decide that google paid (incl transfer pricing agreement) to come up with an overall figure of 0.14% tax paid.

Yes, Ireland's whizkid journalists have calculated the rate of tax Google pay on their profits by dividing tax paid by turnover. This is either unbelievably ignorant or deliberately misleading for the sake of either drama or agenda.

cordially,
Scofflaw

maryishere

A lot of journalists are a bit left wing and unable to call a spade a spade. During the recent busworkers strike for example, only one journalist had the balls to point out that Irish bus drivers are the fourth best paid bus drivers in the world....and have a relatively high absenteeism rate.

creedp

maryishere wrote: »

A lot of journalists are a bit left wing and unable to call a spade a spade. During the recent busworkers strike for example, only one journalist had the balls to point out that Irish bus drivers are the fourth best paid bus drivers in the world....and have a relatively high absenteeism rate.

Are you really saying that it took balls for a jounalist to point out that semi-state workers are relatively well paid and [shudder] have a relatively high absenteeism rate? Witness protection beckons I'd reckon

K-9

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

I think the problem is twofold. Media organisations are squeezed and reporters are expected to produce more in less time. Standards are starting to slip.

Secondly, there's been a bit of an uptick in agenda driven journalism, where stories that suit a certain viewpoint are pushed out by editors without too much care for inconvenient facts.



The cynic in me thinks that's because there isn't any market advantage in running quality stuff. Look at what some of the best selling papers are. There's a lot of people out there who just want to be told what they want to hear.

The focus has become more on opinion piece type journalism which usually means using statistics in a biased way, or more worryingly, bad statistics in a rabble rousing way. All this while less is spent on investigative journalism and more and more papers are outsourcing journalists.

ardmacha

A lot of journalists are a bit left wing and unable to call a spade a spade. During the recent busworkers strike for example, only one journalist had the balls to point out that Irish bus drivers are the fourth best paid bus drivers in the world....and have a relatively high absenteeism rate.

Did they use the OECD bus driver pay index, adjusted for PPP, or did they prefer the World Bank Transport Operative index?

maninasia

Scofflaw wrote: »

Well, they're at it again - this time in relation to the current fuss about corporate taxes, Apple, Google, etc. I'm going to quote antoobrien in response to another poster:



Yes, Ireland's whizkid journalists have calculated the rate of tax Google pay on their profits by dividing tax paid by turnover. This is either unbelievably ignorant or deliberately misleading for the sake of either drama or agenda.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Actually, isn't it something like both sides are wrong.

Google gets away with the small profit charade and therefore pays a small amount of tax by pumping up the 'Cost of Sales' and 'Cost of Admin' , meanwhile the journalist took the entire wodge of revenue without looking at what perhaps could be the normal cost of sales or admin for such a company, without this transfer pricing/IP licensing shennanigans thrown in and therefore what the true profit is and therefore the true tax rate paid was.

I mean I would like to report my income as lower for the tax authorities by paying my wife for her services but they just don't give me that type of deal. Can I throw in 'Cost of Housekeeping' and 'Cost of Maintaining Domestic Bliss' and get a deal on my much reduced income/profit...pleasssee?

Chips Lovell

Scofflaw wrote: »

Yes, Ireland's whizkid journalists have calculated the rate of tax Google pay on their profits by dividing tax paid by turnover. This is either unbelievably ignorant or deliberately misleading for the sake of either drama or agenda.

A lot of journalists don't understand company accounts or taxation. It's actually one of the few areas that training is available on, but I know that many of them don't take it up.

Scofflaw

maninasia wrote: »

Actually, isn't it something like both sides are wrong.

Google gets away with the small profit charade and therefore pays a small amount of tax by pumping up the 'Cost of Sales' and 'Cost of Admin' , meanwhile the journalist took the entire wodge of revenue without looking at what perhaps could be the normal cost of sales or admin for such a company, without this transfer pricing/IP licensing shennanigans thrown in and therefore what the true profit is and therefore the true tax rate paid was.

I mean I would like to report my income as lower for the tax authorities by paying my wife for her services but they just don't give me that type of deal. Can I throw in 'Cost of Housekeeping' and 'Cost of Maintaining Domestic Bliss' and get a deal on my much reduced income/profit...pleasssee?

I can appreciate the wish to come to some estimate of how much Google might be paying tax on in the absence of transfer pricing, but you definitely can't do it by just dividing a profit tax by turnover...!

cordially,
Scofflaw

The Corinthian

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

A lot of journalists don't understand company accounts or taxation. It's actually one of the few areas that training is available on, but I know that many of them don't take it up.

A lot of journalists do little or no research into their articles. For example, one thing I learned a good while ago was never to copy protect any press release, and this is because if and when it does go to print you'll often find that large chunks of it will simply have been copied and pasted into the published article. You make it as easy for the journalist to regurgitate, if you want it published.

There's little or no tradition in actual investigative journalism in Ireland. Much of the reason for this is probably down to the closed nature of Irish politics and business and the rather stringent libel laws in Ireland. Much of it is money (talent tends to go off to the UK). This is why scandals, such as Charlie Haughey's outrageous level of financial corruption, only got reported when it finally became official public knowledge, in the McCracken Tribunal, despite it having been pretty much unofficial public knowledge long before.

Whatever the reason, there's little interest, will or competence where it comes to research and investigation, and this has led to a culture of opinion masquerading as journalism within the Irish press.

There is no Irish Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein and probably never will be.

maninasia

On another point, there seems to be a real lack of numeracy among the AVERAGE journalist.

They just really get numbers or how they are put together, from what I can tell.

I'm not talking about working out quadratic equations, I'm just talking about quoting numbers in articles that simply don't make any sense, contradict each other, and just leave it at that.

Just the ability to stand back from the article, review what they have written, and see that they don't fit together.

Not only Irish journalists do this mind you, where I'm living they often quote millions in billions, and they almost always screw up the currency conversions, sure it doesn't matter if you add or subtract a few 000s in the end.

maninasia

maninasia wrote: »

On another point, there seems to be a real lack of numeracy among the AVERAGE journalist.

They just really get numbers or how they are put together, from what I can tell.

I'm not talking about working out quadratic equations, I'm just talking about quoting numbers in articles that simply don't make any sense, contradict each other, and just leave it at that.

Just the ability to stand back from the article, review what they have written, and see that they don't fit together.

Not only Irish journalists do this mind you, where I'm living they often quote millions in billions, and they almost always screw up the currency conversions, sure it doesn't matter if you add or subtract a few 000s in the end.

The poor use of percentage figures annoys me as well. It'll often only be towards the end of an article where one can figure out if say a 5% increase is an increase from 20% to 25% or 20% to 21%.

Robbo

Deleted User wrote: »

The poor use of percentage figures annoys me as well. It'll often only be towards the end of an article where one can figure out if say a 5% increase is an increase from 20% to 25% or 20% to 21%.

This will also sit happily by an article about failing standards in science and mathematical education.

Personal bugbears of mine are journos making out that some oddball decision of a District Justice in a bad mood "sets a precedent" and one particular Independent journalist seems to think that every single Circuit Court action is for €38,000.

ardmacha

Another blatent example in today's Indo
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/we-spend-11bn-less-a-year-than-in-boom-but-pay-2bn-more-tax-29521647.html

The headline and first paragraph give the impression that more tax is paid than during the boom.
"IRISH people are spending €11bn less a year than they did at the height of the boom, but are paying €2bn more in tax."

but when you read the article it says
"Households paid €23bn in taxes on income and wealth last year compared with €21bn in 2010.

While we paid slightly more in tax at the peak of the boom, that was at a time when hundreds of thousands more people were working."

so in fact the tax figure increase is compared with 2010 and less tax is being paid than during the boom, although the expenditure comparison is with the boom.

Of course the actual issue is that of less people working and less Stamp Duty and those who remain working having to pay more as consequence. A useful and interesting article about this could have been written, but they went for the simplistic misrepresentation instead.

How can a journalist put their name to such misleading text, have they no pride whatsoever?

antoobrien

ardmacha wrote: »

How can a journalist put their name to such misleading text, have they no pride whatsoever?

It's a very mixed up article all right but the salient point supporting the headline (we spend 11bn less) is

While personal spending peaked at €94bn in 2008, it fell back dramatically to €82.6bn last year, the CSO's National Income and Expenditure 2012 report shows.

Cody Pomeray

That doesn't support the headline.

The headline says "We spend €11bn less a year than in boom but pay €2bn more tax", and this is rephrased, unqualified, in the introduction.

The line you quote simply says expenditure has fallen. The line about tax being up relates to 2010. They're not comparing like with like. If they were, they would have to say something unremarkable like "we're spending less than we were in 2008, and we're also paying less in taxes".

Like in the OP, the journalist may not be making bald errors, but he inappropriately and deliberately conflating different data. Seems to be an Indo policy.

theequaliser

The Indo is suffering 'jetlag' from the Bertie era where there was a conformist theme running through all journalistic pieces, 'thou shalt not give opinion'.
They spent years trying to crucify the current Taoiseach with trite comment and name calling.

Also, journalists today only re-hash information that is already in the public domain, where will you find any opinion piece, apart from John Waters and Fintan O' Toole, ).

When all is said and done, the diabolical state of journalism is only attributable to themselves!

Mr.Micro

theequaliser wrote: »

The Indo is suffering 'jetlag' from the Bertie era where there was a conformist theme running through all journalistic pieces, 'thou shalt not give opinion'.
They spent years trying to crucify the current Taoiseach with trite comment and name calling.

Also, journalists today only re-hash information that is already in the public domain, where will you find any opinion piece, apart from John Waters and Fintan O' Toole, ).

When all is said and done, the diabolical state of journalism is only attributable to themselves!

The trouble is, he who pays the piper calls the tune. You do not get a dog .... to bite you. So the Journos will do their bit but not attack the real issues where it might offend the bosses and friends.

Scofflaw

Mr.Micro wrote: »

The trouble is, he who pays the piper calls the tune. You do not get a dog .... to bite you. So the Journos will do their bit but not attack the real issues where it might offend the bosses and friends.

There's a standard journalistic dilemma where you want "inside information" so you cultivate inside contacts, but in order to keep the inside contacts friendly you have to not embarrass them.

The difficult way of squaring that circle is to cultivate only junior contacts and do lots of hard investigative work. The result is that everyone with any clout hates you.

The easy way of squaring it is to make a Faustian pact with a senior contact, get insider information, but go easy on your contact in press. The result is that you become besties with lots of people with clout, and begin to acquire clout yourself.

If pretty much everyone chooses the second route, you wind up with a media whose idea of an "exposé" is to cover at length how tortured Brian Lenihan felt as he made the guarantee decision, but which tells people absolutely nothing about how the decision was made.

And Joe MacAnthony works in Canada.

cordially,
Scofflaw

antoobrien

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

That doesn't support the headline.

The headline says "We spend €11bn less a year than in boom but pay €2bn more tax", and this is rephrased, unqualified, in the introduction.

The line you quote simply says expenditure has fallen. The line about tax being up relates to 2010. They're not comparing like with like. If they were, they would have to say something unremarkable like "we're spending less than we were in 2008, and we're also paying less in taxes".

Like in the OP, the journalist may not be making bald errors, but he inappropriately and deliberately conflating different data. Seems to be an Indo policy.

The headline has little to do with the journalist, it's the editors that choose headlines.

It's also very petty to ignore the fact that there is nothing in the headline that is factually wrong.

We spend 11bn less than in the boom - correct and supported by facts given in the article.

We pay 2bn more in taxes - but more than when? That isn't stated, and though it could be inferred it shouldn't be without actually reading the article.

It's not so much lazy journalism (or editing) as lazy reading.

Cody Pomeray

antoobrien wrote: »

The headline has little to do with the journalist, it's the editors that choose headlines... very petty to ignore the fact that there is nothing in the headline that is factually wrong.... lazy reading.

Seems like you;re guilty of lazy reading there, anto.

Perhaps look at what I actually say.

1. I don't say the journalist chooses the headline. Although I presume he wrote the misleading summary lead.
2. I point out that the headline is not factually incorrect.

No, I am criticizing the conflation of two incomparable sets of data. Very simple if you read my post properly.

antoobrien

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Seems like you;re guilty of lazy reading there, anto.

That doesn't support the headline.

But, am, yes it does.

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Perhaps look at what I actually say.

journalist may not be making bald errors, but he inappropriately and deliberately conflating different data

You are laying the blame - all of it - on the journo, not where it belongs in this case - the editor who a) wrote the headline and b) allowed a poorly written article full of confusing facts strung together in a fashion that distorts their meaning, into the paper.

Cody Pomeray

antoobrien wrote: »

You are laying the blame - all of it - on the journo, not where it belongs in this case - the editor

Seems like you're bickering for the sake of bickering here.

The summary lead is the headline by another formulation of words. There is no reason to believe it was not written by the journalist.

Is there *any* substantive point regarding blame that is to be apportioned between the journalist and his editor? If so, what is that point?

antoobrien

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Seems like you're bickering for the sake of bickering here.

The summary lead is the headline by another formulation of words. There is no reason to believe it was not written by the journalist.

Apart from the fact that headlines & summary leads are not usually written by journos, but editors, so why are you tarring a journo for something that is most likely not her (in this case) fault?

It's fairly clear that neither the headline nor the summary/first line of the article were written by the journo because they are inconsistent with the writing style of the rest of the article. The headline & summary line refer to two unrelated measures in the same breath - no other line in the article does that.

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Is there *any* substantive point regarding blame that is to be apportioned between the journalist and his editor? If so, what is that point?

The point is the accuracy of the complaint. Like I said there's plenty wrong with the article - it's a of a quality that would be rejected from a 6th class pupil - but the points raised & conclusions reached don't on the face of it contradict each other. Certainly once someone actually reads the body of the article, the headline actually makes sense, misleading as it is.

Cody Pomeray

Given that the second paragraph follows on from the first, and given that the second paragraph draws on the first, I'd suggest you're, eh, completely wrong.

Again - what is even the point? Why do you care about the "accuracy of the complaint", I don't particularly mind whether this is the journalist's fault or her editors... get over it.

antoobrien

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Given that the second paragraph follows on from the first, and given that the second paragraph draws on the first, I'd suggest you're, eh, completely wrong.

Again - what is even the point? Why do you care about the "accuracy of the complaint", I don't particularly mind whether this is the journalist's fault or her editors... get over it.

There's no "follow on". The headline & summary were written by a different person than wrote the rest of the article - that's as clear as day.

The complaint is about the economic quality of the economic journalism - where there is no real complaint about that here. Complaining about a headline that you read wrong is just being petty.

Cody Pomeray

antoobrien wrote: »

There's no "follow on".

We spend €11bn less a year than in boom but pay €2bn more tax

[1] Irish people are spending €11bn less a year than they did at the height of the boom, but are paying €2bn more in tax.

[2] That is a decrease of around €2,500 for every man, woman and child in the country....

I emboldened the follow on. Or maybe the headline writer wrote the entire article. You're wrong Anto, lets not dwell on it. Nobody cares.

Godge

ardmacha wrote: »

Another blatent example in today's Indo
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/we-spend-11bn-less-a-year-than-in-boom-but-pay-2bn-more-tax-29521647.html

The headline and first paragraph give the impression that more tax is paid than during the boom.
"IRISH people are spending €11bn less a year than they did at the height of the boom, but are paying €2bn more in tax."

but when you read the article it says
"Households paid €23bn in taxes on income and wealth last year compared with €21bn in 2010.

While we paid slightly more in tax at the peak of the boom, that was at a time when hundreds of thousands more people were working."

so in fact the tax figure increase is compared with 2010 and less tax is being paid than during the boom, although the expenditure comparison is with the boom.

Of course the actual issue is that of less people working and less Stamp Duty and those who remain working having to pay more as consequence. A useful and interesting article about this could have been written, but they went for the simplistic misrepresentation instead.

How can a journalist put their name to such misleading text, have they no pride whatsoever?

Funnily enough, in my opinion, both the conclusions in the article from the data supplied and the comments on here are mostly inaccurate and don't paint the picture of what has happened.

At the peak of the boom (I assume 2007/08) we spent €94bn on household goods and paid over €23 bn in taxes on income and wealth.

In 2013 we spend €82 bn on household spending but still pay €23 bn in taxes.

Introducing the intervening figure of 2010 taxes at €21 bn initially serves to confuse but actually is enlightening of itself.

What is demonstrates is that in the period from the peak of the boom to 2010, the fall-off in spending was matched by a fall-off in taxes to reflect the cuts in wages and the loss of jobs.

Since 2010, household spending has continued to fall but an increasing factor in the reasoning for the fall in household spending is the increased taxes as shown by the increase from €21 bn to €23bn.

Of course to look at the complete reasons behind the fall in household spending, you would also have to examine the savings ratio including the pace at which households are paying down debt.