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The decline of Irish journalism
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Makes you wonder why the media were fawning over themselves to tell us that the government were playing a "Blinder" in regard to Covid, despite being amongst the worst in the world. The only comparisons were of the U.S and UK and then the easily bat downable New Zealand who preformed well but are and island in the ****hole of nowhere.
They knew a government was being formed and wanted to keep themselves within frame for a secure and lecrutive "advisor" role.0 -
They're two separate issues really; Irish politicians, journalists and NGOs are all far too cosy with each other and how quality journalism can take place when all revenue streams are being hit.0
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The rise of the internet and social media really killed off quality journalism - worked in the industry myself independently , and the value of a good story or good photograph plummeted , papers found new graduates would write copy or take photographs for next to next nothing - and thers no shortage of work if you work for nothing - except quality nose dives too.0
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So here is the question:
If, for example, the Irish Times became more centrist; would we buy more papers/subscriptions from them?
No. Newspapers worked extremely well 20-25 years ago when the majority of people did not have the internet. Now you can get news instantly and get it for free somewhere online. It's often poor quality, but it's free.
News is instant these days and people are plugged in 24/7, reporting the news 24 hours later means they've missed the scoop in many cases. Lots of people are now too busy to read a paper and scroll through headlines catching bits and pieces and short articles on news websites or on their social media.
Even if the journalism was better quality they still won't be able to entice people to buy a newspaper who have stopped buying them, or more to the point, who have grown up with the internet as part of their lives so have never bought one.0 -
Maybe I used the wrong word "decline" in the thread title.
What I was getting at was the decline in quality, impartiality, etc.
The recent Irish Times Kitty Holland's poorly written story on the homeless mother in the car comes to mind.
Simplistic emotional narratives, not journalism, now dominate the media. Journalists routinely lecture us about the plight of Travellers, asylum seekers, the homeless, and other sacred cows of Irish society, without ever criticizing or questioning them in any meaningful way.
The Irish Times can run a story about a homeless mother "forced" to sleep in her car, even though she turned down a house because she didn't like the location. The media had a field day about how the state had "failed" Margaret Cash, without asking why she had 7 children by age 27 without a job or any way to support them. RTE churns out endless reports portraying Travellers as victims of settled people's racism — but hardly anything about Travellers' own criminality and anti-social behavior.
We don't see stories about mothers forcing their children to sleep in Garda stations and cars so they can campaign for foreva homes in locations of their choice. We don't see stories about people irresponsibly having large numbers of children and leaving them for the state to raise. We don't see stories about Travellers' criminality, tax fraud, and social welfare fraud — or any other explanation for how a community allegedly with 80% unemployment can afford lavish houses, cars, weddings, and First Communion ceremonies that are beyond the means of most working people.
Only one kind of story can be told, and so journalists spend more time manipulating readers emotionally than reporting facts. Knowing that the real story is often not what the media reports, people have become cynical and distrustful of jounalists, and so they don't buy papers to read their biased and partial stories.
If journalists would actually report the truth, we might see more faith in the media, but I don't see that happening again.0 -
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Simplistic emotional narratives, not journalism, now dominate the media. Journalists routinely lecture us about the plight of Travellers, asylum seekers, the homeless, and other sacred cows of Irish society, without ever criticizing or questioning them in any meaningful way.
The Irish Times can run a story about a homeless mother "forced" to sleep in her car, even though she turned down a house because she didn't like the location. The media had a field day about how the state had "failed" Margaret Cash, without asking why she had 7 children by age 27 without a job or any way to support them. RTE churns out endless reports portraying Travellers as victims of settled people's racism — but hardly anything about Travellers' own criminality and anti-social behavior.
We don't see stories about mothers forcing their children to sleep in Garda stations and cars so they can campaign for foreva homes in locations of their choice. We don't see stories about people irresponsibly having large numbers of children and leaving them for the state to raise. We don't see stories about Travellers' criminality, tax fraud, and social welfare fraud — or any other explanation for how a community allegedly with 80% unemployment can afford lavish houses, cars, weddings, and First Communion ceremonies that are beyond the means of most working people.
Only one kind of story can be told, and so journalists spend more time manipulating readers emotionally than reporting facts. Knowing that the real story is often not what the media reports, people have become cynical and distrustful of jounalists, and so they don't buy papers to read their biased and partial stories.
If journalists would actually report the truth, we might see more faith in the media, but I don't see that happening again.
The Irish times is our version of the guardian. Agenda driven liberal drivel. No news just opinion. Garbage media.
Online versions of similar would be buzzfeed and nowthis.
Your post is accurate and I agree 100%0 -
They’re all being hit by dwindling advertising sales and a small market. That’s limiting the ability to do anything that involves serious analysis or reporting resources.
The typical money made by most journalists here would hardly put dinner on the table. I would doubt it’s any kind of sensible career choice anymore.
The result of that is part time opinion pieces and contributors with agendas and editors trying to use mixes of those to give a sense of balance, which it often doesn’t actually achieve.
As for the Irish Times being Ireland’s version of the Guardian?!!! It has regular columns from very conservative Iona Institute types...0 -
Ireland is just too small for journalists to got out on a limb and over attack the status quo.They're two separate issues really; Irish politicians, journalists and NGOs are all far too cosy with each other and how quality journalism can take place when all revenue streams are being hit.
As a result the room is there for nut jobs like Gemma to push conspiracy theories.
I recall during the financial crisis a so called respected financial commentator refusing to criticise Neary the Financial Regulator because he " didnt want to attack a fellow county man"
F.F.S.!0 -
Richard Hillman wrote: »Makes you wonder why the media were fawning over themselves to tell us that the government were playing a "Blinder" in regard to Covid, despite being amongst the worst in the world. The only comparisons were of the U.S and UK and then the easily bat downable New Zealand who preformed well but are and island in the ****hole of nowhere.
They knew a government was being formed and wanted to keep themselves within frame for a secure and lecrutive "advisor" role.
I had the very same thought. Also some of these journos tend to give the game away with some of their tweets when it comes to some stories.
I would have felt a decade ao, that no one under 30 buys a newspaper. That's now is almost no one under 40. I don't think in a decade when they are reaching 50, they will be buying one either.0 -
I subscribe to one national and one international newspaper, at a total cost of €13/month.
Anyone who never, ever buys a paper, subscribes to a news site, or clicks on an ad but complains about the decline in quality journalism is part of the problem.
I take exception to that, I don't buy a newspaper unless they print my pictures, I can't afford to with the rates for usage dropping by over 50% in the past 10years.
Last week I was told that my income will now drop by a further €10k yr, which means under my current setup, I'm earning about €8k a year - yes ... Eight , I'm currently doing 3 days every two weeks but that isn't year round employment, it's since end of march (pre covid I was working 6 days a week), I don't qualify for covid because I'm still in employment and I have been battling with social welfare to get assistance, which has been extremely tough mentally and physically.
I feel I can complain about the decline in quality journalism, because I can see it in print, newspapers aren't filled with news anymore, they are filled with opinion pieces and churnalism.
How many newspaper articles are published using former sports stars opinions on a game or their opinion on a current trend.
It's impossible to flick through the pages of a newspaper and not find a multitude of opinion pieces.
As for churnalism, how many stories are written by journalists who don't actually leave the office, they are ordered to rewrite copy that another paper has, or write an article about how Conor McGregor's niece celebrated her birthday, not to mention the celeb/model post of the day ... I see Roz Purcell and Rosanna Davison have recently had their tweets/Instagram published as if it were of national importance.
Hard news, investigate journalism seems to be almost dead, very few papers appreciate that journalists need to be funded and the good ones will find you exclusives, the good ones will give you a different angle to the other journalists at the same event.
The people that are making these cuts to journalism are people who (it would appear) are only interested in the bottom line ... It's all about money at the end of the day, those that have it don't understand the value of it.
As an example, many of the newspapers in Ireland no longer have their own archives of images, which means that in 5yrs, 10yrs 20yrs if they are doing a flashback piece about the anniversary of some event, they will have to pay the agency who supplied them with images 5/10/20yrs ago and if that agency is gone, they have to pay the original photographer, which means they may find themselves in trouble in the long run if they were to use the images without permission, for the sake of paying a photographer €100-250 for covering the day/event.
Yes, they are saving money not having to pay storage for archive etc but it's a short term gain, long term loss, the people making the decisions cannot see this because they may not understand the knock on effect the money saving can have.0 -
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The bleeding heart garbage that Kitty Holland keeps writing about homelessness (when there is a serious housing affordability problem) must drive the proper journos at the Irish Times crazy. How the editors keep printing that nonsense is amazing.
The Phoenix (before I eventually gave up on it) used to give occasional insights into how the Irish Guardian Times is being driven into the skip by some of its militant, woke journos who are running its NUJ coven.
I stopped buying it years ago, although a family member allows me to avail of their online sub so I can read the juvenile scribblings of both Una Mullally and Tintawn O'Fool whenever I'm constipated. Although I draw the line at Kitty Holland and Sorcha Pollak. 🤮0 -
Always had a hunch about fiach Kelly - on the Irish Times podcast he was usually pro FG over the last year or so.0
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Irishphotodesk wrote: »I take exception to that, I don't buy a newspaper unless they print my pictures, I can't afford to with the rates for usage dropping by over 50% in the past 10years.
Last week I was told that my income will now drop by a further €10k yr, which means under my current setup, I'm earning about €8k a year - yes ... Eight , I'm currently doing 3 days every two weeks but that isn't year round employment, it's since end of march (pre covid I was working 6 days a week), I don't qualify for covid because I'm still in employment and I have been battling with social welfare to get assistance, which has been extremely tough mentally and physically.
I feel I can complain about the decline in quality journalism, because I can see it in print, newspapers aren't filled with news anymore, they are filled with opinion pieces and churnalism.
How many newspaper articles are published using former sports stars opinions on a game or their opinion on a current trend.
It's impossible to flick through the pages of a newspaper and not find a multitude of opinion pieces.
As for churnalism, how many stories are written by journalists who don't actually leave the office, they are ordered to rewrite copy that another paper has, or write an article about how Conor McGregor's niece celebrated her birthday, not to mention the celeb/model post of the day ... I see Roz Purcell and Rosanna Davison have recently had their tweets/Instagram published as if it were of national importance.
Hard news, investigate journalism seems to be almost dead, very few papers appreciate that journalists need to be funded and the good ones will find you exclusives, the good ones will give you a different angle to the other journalists at the same event.
The people that are making these cuts to journalism are people who (it would appear) are only interested in the bottom line ... It's all about money at the end of the day, those that have it don't understand the value of it.
As an example, many of the newspapers in Ireland no longer have their own archives of images, which means that in 5yrs, 10yrs 20yrs if they are doing a flashback piece about the anniversary of some event, they will have to pay the agency who supplied them with images 5/10/20yrs ago and if that agency is gone, they have to pay the original photographer, which means they may find themselves in trouble in the long run if they were to use the images without permission, for the sake of paying a photographer €100-250 for covering the day/event.
Yes, they are saving money not having to pay storage for archive etc but it's a short term gain, long term loss, the people making the decisions cannot see this because they may not understand the knock on effect the money saving can have.
So you'd like to be paid fairly for your work? That seems reasonable. Is it not also reasonable for a newspaper to expect people to pay for their work? For every article you read, there's a journalist, a photographer and an editor to be paid for, possibly more than one journalist and a sub-editor.
Again I'll ask, which news outlets did you rely on during Covid, and how do you support them? Or for election coverage? Where did you turn for Brexit coverage? Where do you go to for updates when there's a terrorist attack in a nearby European city? Or when there's a strike? When there's a major murder trial like Ana Kreigel's? Or a political scandal like Maria Bailey's SwingGate?
Yeah, there's a lot of fluff out there these days but here's the truth of it: You can have quality journalism or you can have free journalism but in most cases you can't have both.0 -
I subscribe to one national and one international newspaper, at a total cost of €13/month.
At €5 a month the "Oirish" edition of the London Times is a complete no-brainer.
I also buy the excellent Irish Examiner on Saturdays and frequently visit its very good website. So I'm probably up to your €13 monthly outlay.
Wild horses wouldn't get me to pay a cent to the Guardian or its second-rate Irish clone.
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This is what happens when people aren't prepared to pay for stuff.
They destroyed their own product by standardising it. Media outlets are indistinguishable from one another and that is mostly by choice - they want to feed you the same generic opinions and calculated misrepresentation as the Guardian, NYT etc., etc.
If Irish media outlets had chosen to offer original and heterodox reporting and opinion then they wouldn't have made themselves redundant. It would be at the cost of enforcing globalised political conformity, which is the real priority over and above profit or circulation.
Desmond Fennell (who used to write for the Irish Press) dates this standardisation of Irish media from the 1960s onwards. Does anyone here remember Nuala O'Faoilean calling it a "conspiracy theory" that Conor Brady was deliberately turning the Irish Times into a liberal newspaper?0 -
YellowBucket wrote: »They’re all being hit by dwindling advertising sales and a small market. That’s limiting the ability to do anything that involves serious analysis or reporting resources.
The typical money made by most journalists here would hardly put dinner on the table. I would doubt it’s any kind of sensible career choice anymore.
The result of that is part time opinion pieces and contributors with agendas and editors trying to use mixes of those to give a sense of balance, which it often doesn’t actually achieve.
As for the Irish Times being Ireland’s version of the Guardian?!!! It has regular columns from very conservative Iona Institute types...
Using the hard/loon right to give balance isn't giving balance really. That just reinforces the position you want to push as the reasonable argument.
I have given up on the paper some time ago, but I cannot recall an editorial that took a centre-right position - for example thinking a republican US president might be ok.0 -
Let's compare it to a Netflix subsciption.
There's an awful lot of garbage I'd never watch on Netflix, but there's also a lot of stuff I'm interested in. I see the stuff I'm interested in as being well worth the €11/month. If I wanted access to those shows for free, I'd have to go to some crappy site with tons of irritating ads.
I have zero interest in the Sports section of any newspaper, but I don't resent the fact that it's there. Same for celebrity culture, couldn't give a monkeys. But I want access to the news, business insights and politics and I'm happy to pay for them.0 -
@MrMusician18: To be fair, the current US president is no Republican either. I’m not sure anyone knows what he represents, but it certainly isn’t the supposed values of the party whose ticket he’s riding upon.0
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Everyone on the street was talking about how corrupt Haughey was. It was common knowledge. It came out many years after the damage was done.
There was whispers about Bertie and numerous others.
I expect many revelations about Michael Noonan in a few years as something smells rotten about Sitserv and his 'inappropriate behaviour'.
The point, for a number of reasons our journalist's have been severely lacking for the longest time.0 -
YellowBucket wrote: »To be fair, the current US president is no Republican either.
I'm not referring to Trump, where derision is justified, but Romney would probably have made a fine US president as would've McCain. There was no way an Irish media outlet world ever say that though.
As for the papers blaming cuts to advertising for the lack of quality now - well when they had buckets of money during the boom they weren't any good either.
It's been a slow steady decline since the late 90's.0 -
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YellowBucket wrote: »@MrMusician18: To be fair, the current US president is no Republican either. I’m not sure anyone knows what he represents, but it certainly isn’t the supposed values of the party whose ticket he’s riding upon.
It certainly is. He is the Republican party. They support everything he says and does. Their 'values' are for sale.0 -
Eric Cartman wrote: »The irish times is doomed to incorrectly re write history. I hope in 50 years time nobody dares utter a word una mullally wrote and thinks it was in any way truthful or how the nation felt about anything
Wait, I had just assumed she was satire no?0 -
MrMusician18 wrote: »I'm not referring to Trump, where derision is justified, but Romney would probably have made a fine US president as would've McCain. There was no way an Irish media outlet world ever say that though.
As for the papers blaming cuts to advertising for the lack of quality now - well when they had buckets of money during the boom they weren't any good either.
It's been a slow steady decline since the late 90's.
I'm not sure I agree with you on that. McCain happened to run in 2008 against a once-in-a-generation type candidate. He was widely respected for his time in the military and as a POW, as well as for bipartisan efforts in a long Senate career.
I don't think the media would have been opposed to him as president. What makes you think they would have been?0 -
YellowBucket wrote: »@MrMusician18: To be fair, the current US president is no Republican either. I’m not sure anyone knows what he represents, but it certainly isn’t the supposed values of the party whose ticket he’s riding upon.
That's true, but I don't believe the Irish media has ever endorsed a Republican for president. They automatically support the Democratic candidate, no matter what.0 -
That's true, but I don't believe the Irish media has ever endorsed a Republican for president. They automatically support the Democratic candidate, no matter what.
They fell all over Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s and couldn’t be more fawning if they tried.
Anyone who has an Irish link (probably the present administration aside) they tend to be all over.
The Clintons tended to get big coverage here because they spent a lot of time here during the 1990s peace process era and have generally been very available to Irish causes.
If you’d a more centrist & Irish interested republican, you might see more focus. The current batch don’t really resonate in Ireland at all.0 -
Over the last 5 to 10 years, I've felt that many of the national newspapers have had the analytical depth of a puddle.
What really broke my faith in them were the several occasions where they reported on issues that I would have had a good bit of knowledge of, including several that were work related. The analysis was dire; they failed to drill into where figures came from, what they meant, other reason policies were implemented, possible counteractuals (that should be fairly obvious to anyone who thought about the issues for more than five minutes), etc. One Journal.ie article basically took a misunderstanding of operational details, twisted it around a bit, and came to a conclusion that amounted to "it's all a conspiracy, maaaan!!!". Complete crap, and, when it occurs more than once, leads to the uncomfortable idea that if the reporting and analysis is this bad in relation to issues I know about, what's to say it's not similarly awful in many, if not most, other articles that these papers print (that aren't reprinted from an authoritative source, that still puts effort into the work).
To take another example, the rental crisis has been reduced, by many newspapers, to a laughably childish "renters good, landlords bad" dichotomy, as opposed to seeing it as a multi-variable system, where you have good and bad actors on both sides. There was a failure to look at research on the impact (both positive and negative) of rent controls in other countries, instead insisting on a narrative that they would fix the problem, and make the bad landlords tow the line. There is a complete lack of recognition given to the fact that the difficuty facing landlords in evicting hellish tennants (as well as the financial losses that can be incurred through property damage and loss of rental income) means that less people are willing to become/remain landlords, which will decrease the supply of units available to rent, ultimately leaving renters worse off through decreased choice and higher rental costs. Lastly, there seem to be continuous calls, by the media, for government to intervene in the situation, without any sort of recognition given to the fact that past government interventions, and poor policy choices, have caused these problems to begin with.
Regarding the decline itself, I'd believe that causation ran/runs both ways, and created something of a vicious cycle. A decline in advertising revenue (due to a greater diversity of advertising outlets/arenas, disruption from lower cost specialist outlets, etc.) led to less money to devote to investigative reporting (which is much more expensive to produce than the clickbait rubbish we often see now). Similarly, changing organisational priorities and other factors (such as the move to a 24 hour news cycle necessitating more content and stretching respouces, the adoption of a more activist/blogger-like stance by younger journalists as opposed to a more balanced journalistic style, the aforementioned revenue declines, etc.) has led to a decrease in the quality of journalistic output from many organisations, which in turn means less people are willing to spend money to buy newspapers. Less revenue leads to lower quality output, which in turn leads to less revenue, and so on, which ultimately leads to many newspapers only being a shell of their once proud selves.
There are still excellent newspapers out there, but they are fewer and further between than they used to be, unfotunately. Hopefully, those that focus more on quality content will be better positioned to ride out the storm, and will be left behind when market forces correct the problem, leaving fewer news organisations to fight over a relatively fixed amount of advertising expenditure.0 -
So you'd like to be paid fairly for your work? That seems reasonable. Is it not also reasonable for a newspaper to expect people to pay for their work? For every article you read, there's a journalist, a photographer and an editor to be paid for, possibly more than one journalist and a sub-editor.
Again I'll ask, which news outlets did you rely on during Covid, and how do you support them? Or for election coverage? Where did you turn for Brexit coverage? Where do you go to for updates when there's a terrorist attack in a nearby European city? Or when there's a strike? When there's a major murder trial like Ana Kreigel's? Or a political scandal like Maria Bailey's SwingGate?
Yeah, there's a lot of fluff out there these days but here's the truth of it: You can have quality journalism or you can have free journalism but in most cases you can't have both.
For the vast majority of events happening in Ireland I would have been there documenting it for the newspapers so many of the images you would have seen from those events could have been mine or other colleagues, often I will know a story before it's published in newspapers or online, on some occasions I will be the link between the subject of a story and the journalists that produce the person's story for the public to read.
For the ana kriegel case I was in the courthouse for bail application for both boys and have done similar for many cases over the past 20ish years, I have been at many murder scenes, fatal accidents, festivals and concerts, sports events local, national and international.
In answer to your question what I did during covid to support newspapers, at the start I purchased many titles (to store and show my kids in 10-20years time) as covid progressed and my work was cut, I was forced to assess finances, and financially I couldn't afford to continue to support newspapers when my income was cut, as I mentioned previously, my income level is now approx €8k a year (working 3 days every 2 weeks) I have a family to feed, a mortgage, loans and bills to pay, I have no idea how this is going to happen, I cannot work because the papers are not publishing images and I cannot support newspapers because I need to feed my family and myself with whatever we have.
I do not qualify for covid and social welfare have asked me to supply information which I have done, if you have a read in the thread on coronavirus and social welfare you can see that the dept of social welfare seem to be deliberately causing difficulty for self employed people.
The people in my local welfare office said I needed to close my job seekers application online so they could process it in the office, and as a result I had to start the process again, I'm getting letters from cork requesting documents and letters from my local welfare office requesting the same documents , in total approx 50pages - I can't afford the ink to print and post it, I'm beyond caring at this point.... Mentally I'm drained.
What do you suggest that I do ? In order to help newspapers that do not wish to employ me because the amount of work available is limited these days.0 -
I'm not sure I agree with you on that. McCain happened to run in 2008 against a once-in-a-generation type candidate. He was widely respected for his time in the military and as a POW, as well as for bipartisan efforts in a long Senate career.
I don't think the media would have been opposed to him as president. What makes you think they would have been?
Obama was a once in a generation candidate but they backed Clinton in the primary.
And They still backed Obama in 2012 after his treasury secretary (Geithner) refused to countenance senior bond holders in Anglo Irish get burned.0 -
YellowBucket wrote: »They fell all over Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s and couldn’t be more fawning if they tried.
I don't recall the media being pro-Reagan. Do you have any examples?
Thousands of people protested Reagan's visit to Ireland in 1984, including now-president Michael D. Higgins. When Reagan received an honourary Doctor of Laws from NUI Galway, around 1,500 academics and students gathered to protest, many of them burning their own degree parchments in protest.
The protests gained favourable coverage in the media, especially RTE.0 -
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Eric Cartman wrote: »The irish times is doomed to incorrectly re write history. I hope in 50 years time nobody dares utter a word una mullally wrote and thinks it was in any way truthful or how the nation felt about anything
Don't like her but she was fairly accurate about the national mood surrounding gay marriage.0
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