In the “big snow” in the 80’s, I was on Political Correspondent duty in The Irish Times. And, of course, the snow was the story. The country had ground to a halt and the people were complaining that the government wasn’t doing enough and that the roads hadn’t been cleared. Nothing was happening over in the Dáil Political Correspondent’s Room, so I came back to the office, where we had direct phone lines, to try to find out why the snow ploughs and the grit lorries hadn’t gone out.
It was evening time but I managed to get three county engineers at their homes. The snow ploughs and the grit lorries had not gone out, they told me because the government hadn’t paid the local authorities for the last time they’d had to go out and clear the roads of snow.
Aha, so this was the real story. But was is appreciated? Not at all, it was buried on page 18 and I was ticked off for not waiting in the Political Correspondents’ Room to hear Minister Peter Barry come in and say that the government was going to do everything it could to deal with the snow. Peter Barry’s reassurance led the front page, making the government look good. That was a feel-good story. Mine was a bad-news story, making the government look bad.
The paper chose to go with the good-news story, maybe because that’s what they felt the poor old cold readers wanted to hear. My point is that newspapers will run good-news stories. They don’t have to be pressurised to do it. And if a local paper hears that some big capital investment is planned for their area, they will report it. They might raise some questions about how feasible it is but if it’s good news for their area, of course, they’re going to run it.
Which brings us to the furore over the way the government set about publicising its Project Ireland 2040 Plan. Local papers were contacted on the government’s behalf by Mediaforce, a UK-based company with an Irish office. Some papers have confirmed to The Times: Ireland Edition and to other reporters that they were asked to run the content about the 2040 plan without the words “commercial or advertising feature” or “advertisement” or the equivalent above it. Even though the space was to be paid for.
This is fuzzing the line between advertisements, which are paid for and independent editorial reports, which are not. The reader has a right to know which is which. Then, take the context. The same Mediaforce Group owns Iconic, a company which has acquired about a dozen local Irish newspapers. Did those papers feel under pressure to do what they were asked?
Local papers, like newspapers generally, are going through hard times. People have got used to getting their news for free on social media. And much of that news comes from monitored news outlets, like newspapers or broadcasters. So, social media is hitting proper monitored news outlets twice. First, by using their work to attract users without paying for it and secondly, because advertisers are deserting the monitored news outlets and following the “no-pay generation” onto social media.
The business model which supported newspapers and broadcasters for decades is crumbling. So, the money the government handed out to local papers and the conditions attached to it would have been very hard to refuse.
Now, my worry about Leo Varadkar is his apparent need to control every inch of space, every media moment, by filling it with selfies or with government-initiated content. Except that this time, it has blown up in his face spectacularly. With no pressure at all, most local papers would have treated the announcements for their area in Project Ireland 2040 as a good-news story anyway. But instead of basking in all that good news, the Taoiseach and his strategic communications unit now find themselves the target of lurid accusations of Stalinist news manipulation, of using taxpayer’s money to put across a Fine Gael message and people are asking, what if they try something like this over The Budget?
And the accusations of Soviet-like propaganda are re-enforced by a recent level of public information messages about health and safety that I have only come across in Castro’s Cuba. Yes, I know it’s right that we should be told that drink gives you a hangover. And that it’s good for you to get off the bus a stop early and walk to work. But where does it stop? Indeed, how soon before Leo’s people who get up early in the morning will awake to the radio telling them “Remember. This beautiful sunrise has been brought to you by the government of Ireland.”
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