Media

By Gerard Cunningham The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015 for Ireland gives an effective overview of who learns what where, here. The report describes Ireland as “a broadly engaged audience who are digitally immersed but with a substantial allegiance to traditional sources.” The report is produced in association with Dublin City University’s Institute for Future Journalism and Media (FuJo) and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI). In a foreword, BAI chief executive Michael O’Keeffe hopes that the reports will “track key trends and identify data points that will assist the BAI in its deliberations”, something that should come in handy for the authority’s newly announced role in refereeing media mergers. Ireland is not particularly special when it comes to media consumption compared to the other 12 country Reuters studies, though we are more reluctant than average to pay for news, and more than usually likely to read foreign news. The Irish have also – so far at least – been less willing than other English-speaking audiences to abandon print, although even in Ireland circulation numbers are falling. The survey, based on a sample of 1501 adults who get news once a month or more, was conduced online in Ireland by ResearchNow, the Irish research partner of YouGov. The overall margin of error rate is 2.5%. The primary news source is online media, at 83%, with TV coming second at 76%. Radio (50%) and Print (49%) bring up the rear. It is notable that while radio and print come last, both are above average compared to international trends. The survey also reveals a glaring generation gap. Put bluntly, TV is for old people, while under-24s are abandoning it in favour of online sources. The contrast could not be more stark for RTÉ: 77% of over-55s got news from TV or radio in the past week, while the equivalent figure for 18-24 year olds is just 34%. At the same time, 21% of 18-24s checked the RTE.ie website, compared to only 0.5% of over-55s. As this is the first time that Ireland has been included in the Reuters report, it provides a baseline for future comparison, but no Irish trends are apparent yet. However, internationally, broadcast news is in decline, with print and broadcast news merging online. The survey took place in January-February, before the Irish Times introduced its paywall, so future surveys will also show the full effect that had on audience figures. Essentially, while viewers will still check in with TV and radio broadcasts at fixed hours, they are becoming more and more likely to get news, whether audio, video, or text, by phone. What’s true of entertainment, through services like Netflix, is equally true of news. TV is seen as the most accurate/reliable (37%) and trustworthy (38%) news source, but a majority (53%) believe that the best sources of analysis and comment are available online. This may reflect the wider range of opinions available in specialist blogs and news websites, the limited number of columnists in print, or a combination of both. Unsurprisingly, online is also seen as the best place for updates on breaking news. Online, just under three quarters (74%) of the population use a computer to obtain news, and the halfway tipping point has been reached on mobile, with 52% using it to check news. The generation gap is again visible here: smartphone users are younger; computer users are older. Among over-55s, 72% have used a computer to access news, but only 17% a  smartphone. Gender analysis show a strong male preference for sports (52% of men, 15% of women) but it may be worth asking whether this is a chicken and egg situation. Most sports stories are about men’s sports, which may influence the audience it attracts. During June, the soccer columns were full of transfer rumours, for example, while the women’s World Cup was almost ignored. It may also be notable that while men read more about sports, only 17% said they were interested in health stories, compared to 42% of women. Some survey answers are difficult to accept at face value. The Irish claim to care deeply about international (64%) and national (59%) news stories, but not that much for celebrity (21%) or fun/weird “offbeat” news (18%): figures any journalist aware of what stories are most read and shared will question. This could be due to the nature of the online survey – those who answer are self-selecting, and may have a higher than average interest in news, or they may be giving an answer which reflects better on themselves. Another question, on what makes a story get read, provides an interesting contrast. Most (58%) said they “click on headlines that are most interesting to me”, contrasted with 32% who declared the basis was trust in the news site and 8% based on trust in the person sharing the story. This is the reverse of what is seen internationally, where trust is more highly rated. It may reflect deep cultural issues with trust in media, or a refreshing honesty about the effectiveness of clickbaiting headlines. The Irish certainly have trust issues. Only 46% trust the news in general, and 30% said they don’t trust most news. However 57% said they trust their chosen sources of news. Traditional news was seen as more accurate, reliable and trusted than online news in general, and TV news is seen to be more accurate than either print or online news, which will please RTÉ. Trust increases with age, education and income. Age makes a difference once again when it comes to preferred online news sources. The users of the traditional news brands – RTÉ, the Irish Independent, and the Irish Times – are much older than those for TheJournal.ie, which dominates among younger readers in the 18-24 and 25-34 age cohorts. RTÉ dominates the overall market. 58% watch TV news, and 33% listen to radio news. RTÉ radio and TV combined reach 65%. Online, RTÉ web offerings reach 31% of the potential audience. The Independent

By Gerard Cunningham It’s one of the first pieces of advice journalists share about their online work, and perhaps an adage that someone ought to have passed to Labour senator Lorraine Higgins. Higgins is the sponsor of one of two private members bills before the Oireachtas at the moment, each seeking to deal with “cyberbullying” and related issues. They raise questions about free speech in Ireland. In Higgins’ case, among other things, the Harmful and Malicious Electronic Communications Bill would introduce penalties of up to twelve months in jail or a €5,000 fine for “harmful” or “malicious” communications. The extent of its ambition is clearest in section 5, which provides that a court may demand that an individual apologise and delete a message on the internet even when a person had been found not guilty of any offence. Higgins has made cyberbullying her cause since the European elections in 2014, in which she was a candidate in the Ireland North constituency, when she received several messages on her campaign Facebook page. During the election, she tweeted a mockup of a Luke Ming Flanagan poster with Dustin the Turkey superimposed on Flanagan’s head, and the slogan “Don’t send another turkey to Europe”. (The poster has since been pointed to by some on twitter, accusing her of hypocrisy in her cyber-cleanup campaign.) Three weeks after the Ming the Turkey episode, Higgins made the news again when she told reporters she had reported death threats, to Gardai who had carried out a security sweep of her home. Newspaper reports at the time refer to three specific threats which were forwarded to Gardai. Despite several internet searches, only one of the three could be located for this article. The Facebook message, an outpouring of vulgar abuse, begins by addressing the senator as a “POXY traitorous two faced money grabbing bimbo bitch”, and moves on from there. Concluding with a (repeated) threat to “rip off your head and shove it up your hole”. It cannot have been an easy message to read, and given the nature of political campaigns and the depths to which online debates can sometimes sink, it was far from unique, but it is difficult to see that it makes up a credible threat. It’s vulgar abuse and an incoherent rant, not a plan of action. In an interview with Sean O’Rourke last year, Higgins outlined the contents of some of the other messages, including comments that she “should have been aborted”. She also revealed that she “had an individual who was attempting to blackmail me, but wouldn’t identify what he was attempting to blackmail me about”. (Clearly, we’re not dealing with Professor Moriarty here.) Higgins’ bill does make one useful proposal. In a blog, Fregal Crehan, a barrister who also runs The Hit Team, a business which helps individuals to “remove sensitive and private material from the internet”, notes the provision relating to “revenge porn”, where the law is currently lacking, though noting a data protection/privacy approach might be more effective than criminal sanctions. The free speech risks were highlighted by senator John Crown, who said the bill could be used to silence Mairia Cahill. Higgins response, that she would be exempt because she had “lawful excuse”, raised the eternal question, who gets to decide which speech is lawful, once some speech is deemed beyond the Pale. Free speech concerns led to the #KillTheBill hashtag on Twitter, although tweets also noted that the bill seemed unlikely to succeed in becoming law, given justice minister’s Frances Fitzgerald’s comments during the second stage debate that it “has the potential to be very dangerous”. The Seanad debate on the bill was preceded by news reports that a ‘troll’ had written to apologise to the senator. The letter was reproduced in at least one national newspaper. The writer states that at the time he was “unemployed, stressed, and deeply unhappy”, expresses his sorrow several times, and wishes the senator all the best in the future. In preparation for this article, an individual on Facebook who appeared to be the author of the letter was identified and contacted, but did not respond to a request for an interview. It is unclear at time of going to press whether Garda inquiries on foot of complaints by Senator Higgins are ongoing, or whether the DPP has reached a decision on prosecutions having received garda files. However it is worth noting either way that Garda officers felt able to launch an inquiry under existing public-order and harassment laws. •

By Gerard Cunningham After five years John Murray would no longer be presenting his Radio 1 weekday morning show, from Friday 3 July. “The John Murray Show will come to a close”, the RTÉ statement stated simply. Brendan O’Connor would be taking over for July. Further details followed. Murray would return to Radio 1 in the Autumn in a “brand new role”, but no more details were given. And there would be news about who followed Brendan O’Connor later. But not yet. John Murray seemed an unusual choice to replace Ryan Tubridy in the morning slot five years ago. But then again RTÉ has never been quite sure what to do with the hour between 9AM and 10AM. Sandwiched between the news heavyweights of ‘Morning Ireland’ and the ‘Today’ programme, the slot has a mandate to concentrate on ‘lighter’ stories, with a mix of human-interest and offbeat interviews. Murray has spent some time on ‘Morning Ireland’, before moving on topresent ‘The Business’. The Saturday programme didn’t offer much outlet for creativity (let’s face it, businessmen are dull), but Murray did find a comedy vein to mine in an amusing regular feature mocking the ridiculous excesses of business and PR jargon. He seemed like a talented character. But all humour works in context, and it was the very dullness and self-importance of many of the subjects in The Business which made the jargon gags work. Despite the best efforts of Murray and his production team, the topical jokes which introduced each morning’s John Murray show always sounded, by contrast, a little laboured. It felt like the grafting of a TV monologue onto a radio production – Jay Leno meets Operation Transformation, yet the team persisted with it for the entire run of the show. Nevertheless, Murray did manage to carve out an identity for himself, as for example in promoting the John Murray Walking Club, which tied in with the less successful Operation Transformation for slimmers – a minority interest imposed on a working audience unlikely to be in the mood for the faux exuberance it championed. Who will replace Murray? In his first day on the programme, Brendan O’Connor was eager to point out that he was not the replacement. He told his audience he had simply been booked as a four-week holiday stand-in, and emphasised that this had happened before the announcement was made. Furthermore, he said, he had no idea who would take over after his holiday stint. Ray D’Arcy, currently occupying the mid-afternoon slot between ‘Joe Duffy’ and ‘Drivetime’, would seem a logical choice for RTÉ. Before his defection back to the mothership at the end of last year, he helmed the mid-morning show on TodayFM. And despite his protests that he knows nothing, Brendan O’Connor is also a possible candidate. He has built up a following in his time as a Saturday night chat show host, and is generally at ease with the mix of light features and magazine stories the timeslot has been deemed to require. An outside candidate might be Marty Morrissey, who also took charge of the mid-afternoon slot for a while during the interregnum between Derek Mooney and Ray D’Arcy. Morrissey might equally be a candidate to return to the afternoon slot in the scheduling musical chairs if D’Arcy makes the move. Dublin 4 would not take cheer and Radio 1 would be in danger of losing its unique selling point, however. Miriam O’Callaghan also held down the fort for a while, when Murray was on sick leave in 2013, and attracted notice, not least because listenership figures increased during her demure tenure. And she is only one of several women in the broadcaster who are good candidates for the position, among them Keelin Shanley, Rachel English, Aine Lawlor and Claire Byrne. What seems unlikely is that RTE would abandon the basic template of its daytime schedule. John Murray’s replacement will host a programme that runs for one hour, between ‘Morning Ireland’ and the impressively serious Sean O’Rourke. A move as daring as increasing the running time of the show, or eliminating it and moving O’Rourke’s start to 9AM, is unlikely. And while the format may vary slightly in terms of tone and topics, RTÉ’s innate conservatism means that it will essentially continue the established pattern of interview segments with occasional quizzes and musical breaks. A truemagazine programme, with extended outside reports from contributing reporters, seems to be the least likely format in the Autumn. Meantime, none of his team at the station has any firm information and there is no news of what John Murray’s “brand new role” (the description itself suggests a jaded joylessness) in the Autumn will be, whether a return to an old haunt like ‘The Business’ or ‘Morning Ireland’, or a new venture. •

Hymn to the online publisher. By Jane Tuohy