Continuing where I left off with Republic 2011 I recently found myself in attendance at the Mindfield: International Festival of Ideas for the Politics of News and Media discussion event. Following the opening Politcial Cabaret act the speakers were introduced: Hugh Linehan of the Irish Times, David Cochrane of Politics.ie, David Redmond of TV3 and (I hope this is the right guy) Smari McCarthy, an Icelandic-Irish innovator and activist.
Although billed as a discussion about the politics of news and media it quickly became apparent, with Linehan and Redomond dominating proceedings, that the issue of politics was only of secondary importance in comparison with the matter of economics and the media. From the off Linehan argued that "the view from nowhere" notion of perfect objectivity in journalism is one imported from the States and that, even over there, it's erstwhile lustre has been badly tarnished of late with the rise of things like conservative/progressive talk radio and blogs. In contrast, on this side of the Atlantic there has always been a broader acceptance of the fact that journalists are fallible and of the fact that most editorial lines taken will frequently be more sympathetic to certain, pre existing ideological positions that reflect the concerns of the newspaper's staff and its readers.
Redmond agreed, saying that he was less concerned by bias. Rather than reducing direct political influence the country needed more a plurality of views due to the fact that its media community is heavily centralised with much of its agenda driven by RTE and what it chooses to cover. This segued, unsurprisingly enough, into an attack on their dual licence fee and advertising funding model (with RTE.ie's dominant market position coming in for specific criticism) before he addressed the issue of political bias within TV3 itself by noting that their largest single advertiser accounted for no more than 6% of their revenue and that this meant that there was no fear within their newsroom of offending any commercial partner. In reply to a question about how to get the balance right between news and entertainment he did concede that it was a huge issue and that TV3 needed to differentiate itself more by making its news gathering process less mundane (easier said than done though, apparently). Continuing in the same vein he argued, against a contribution made by McCarthy that the Royal Wedding had been covered excessively by all news organisations, that if there's a sufficiently large audience for something then it should be given coverage.
Another observation made by McCarthy about how the public is constantly being inundated with new inforamtion on a moment to moment basis had the panel changing tack as they discussed how this information was being sifted through and evaluated by the public. Linehan observed that the right wing, quality broadsheet Daily Telegraph was now gaining a lot of readers through its entertainment stories while he also noted how strange it was that the Irish Times' top rated story on their website for two days was a short agency piece on a woman who'd bitten off her boyfriend's testicles. From this he concluded, echoing a point he made earlier that news analysis will probably turn out to be the primary activity for news organisations in the future, that the narrative edifice that makes a God out of search engine optimisation (S.E.O.) may be founded on quicksand. Little more than froth at the top, was ultimately how he characterised the story of the gelded boyfriend. Indeed, Redmond echoed this point when he argued that news organisations are not merely at the mercy of external pressures (e.g. the dread S.E.O.) as he discussed TV3's response to their declining news ratings last Summer. Noting that their target demographic of women and, more generally, C2DE viewers (the skilled working classes, and downwards on the skills ladder) were switching off from their economics-heavy content they chose to focus on health, crime and education instead and the ratings recovered.
In response to interventions from McCarthy and Cochrane Redmond continued to maintain that political bias was not such an important issue. The former pointed out that pressure from vested interests can be applied via things like "understandings" (I took this to be a euphemism for veiled threats) and employment considerations while Cochrane underlined the role that the prevalence of "advertorials" and property supplements (although he did concede that much of their power was now a thing of the past) could play in compromising editorial standards. Against this Redmond cited Richard Curran's Futureshock (while we're on the subject, this would be hilarious if it wasn't genuine) as being an example of the media not bowing to commerical pressures and conniving in the creation of a false consensus. In noting that he felt it to be deeply unfair that news and current affairs broadcasts can't be sponsored directly (he tried to do this once with TV3's Vincent Browne show and Bank of Scotland) he argued that advertisers only want access to an audience and not the show's producers or editors.
The discussion then moved onto the issue of the web and how news organisations are grappling with it. McCarthy argued that much of our understanding of free speech as a concept is inherited from the Enlightenment and that we need to reform how we understand this concept in order to reflect the new realities of information dissemination. Linehan sort of agreed with the general sentiment, noting that the Irish Times was behind international best practice. At the same time though he also hinted that determining what this was was fairly complicated given that the News corp paywall strategy seemed to be in bad repair given the hit it's delivered to their overal readership figures. Cochrance then seemed to contradict this (it was that sort of weirdly polite discussion) in stating that, from his encounters with RTE and print journalists, they viewed online publishing as the enemy. Redmond, once again at odds with the small 'd' defeatist analysis, argued that although he was concerned by RTE's web presence he did still view economics as being the saviour of news organisations. Supporting this point, Linehan pointed out that in the past the prevailing view was generally that it was the guy who wants to sell used cars that ultimately ends up funding the Baghdad bureau. As McCarthy pointed out however, newspapers are now competing with "free"; surely not a confidence inspiring development when one bears in mind that most media analysts seem in agreement that the realities of the marketplace are a far bigger threat to the integrity of many news organisations than the issue of political or ideological bias.
Ultimately, this exchange seemed to point out the underlying problem behind this discussion though: with no representative from either RTE or any of Dennis O'Brien's vast media holdings (commercial interests and editorial lines seemingly being something of a tricky subject for many ploughing their furrows within his Empire) particiapting and with Linehan (online editor of the Times, remember) the only journalist hailing from the print media world the discussion struggled to make much of an inroad into either politics or economics. If the discusson was really about politics then surely at least one dedicated poilitical journalist should have featured. But if, as all seemingly agreed, it was actually a question of economics then surely someone from print media should have featured to counter (as Cochrane suggested they would have) Linehan's partisan advocacy for "free". Although Cochrane and McCarthy did their best with their contributions both seemed to be little more than outsiders in a debate where the only people with any significant insight to offer in this closed world of information trading are well ensconced insiders. The result was that both could do little more than offer dissenting general analyses as opposed to the detail heavy, specific scenarios offered by Redmond and Linehan.
As McCarthy argued and Gillain Welch once sang, everything is free now. Dealing with the fallout from this development will involve a lot of critical engagement with the messy realities of large and complex institutions. Aside from pointing this out, it would appear that there's not a whole lot that a general view can contribute in this debate. The old paradigm has not to shifted to something new. Instead, it's been smashed into hundreds of smaller case studies as news organisations grapple with their own unique identities and the implications of the consumption habits of their readers. Although the old, provocative questions of ideological bias and commercial influence seem to have been put on hold for the moment they have, in truth, never been of greater importance for many news organisations in the sense that it is this which determines who reads what titles and, consequently, how they read them.
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