Media

Phone tapping never went way, since you ask

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Phone tapping never went way, since you ask

By Gerard Cunningham Getting it right next time” was the theme of the 15th Cleraun media conference, as academics and journalists jousted over what went wrong during the Celtic Tiger, whether the media could have done more to warn about the dangers of the boom, and what to do next time. Many felt commercial media were compromised by property advertising, to the extent that evidence of a problem was ignored.  There was debate over whether journalists could be blamed when most economists had also failed to predict the crash. But when it came to ‘Getting it right next time’, the focus was on better economic reporting to spot the next bubble/crash. The trouble is, when history repeats itself, it is as carbon copy. The next bubble is unlikely to be property. The generals are preparing to fight the last war, but a glance at coverage of the latest trends in the Dublin property market illustrates that the claims of estate agents and economists are being scrutinised as never before. Meanwhile, data protection has become a big issue for multinationals, and there are signs that Ireland is losing out. On the day the Cleraun conference opened, Amazon announced it was offering its corporate customers the option of running internet services and holding data in Germany, in a bid to reassure European businesses nervous about the threat of online spying in the US. Microsoft announced in mid-September plans to host a new data centre in Germany, which would hold data on its German customers, secure from the prying eyes of the NSA. Oracle announced a further two data centres in Frankfurt and Munich at the end of the month. Those announcements should worry the IDA. Microsoft and Amazon already have data centres in Ireland, and EU laws are supposed to mean that the data protection regime in Ireland is as strong as that in Berlin. But cases like Europe v Facebook have demonstrated that the Irish data protection commissioner is severely under-resourced, and the image of the commissioner’s head office located above a supermarket in Portarlington thanks to Charlie McCreevy’s decentralisation brainwave, did not go down well overseas. The 2015 budget saw no change in the amount to be spent on the Data Protection Commissioner’s office, though it has been promised a new office in the capital. It may seem counter-intuitive, but technology companies actually want stringent regulation. While Google may complain about the Right to be Forgotten, the corporations who entrust their data to the cloud know they have to demonstrate their data is secure. One consultancy firm estimated that American companies could lose up to $35 billion (€27.5 billion) to overseas companies by 2016 because of their customers’ worries about state spying. And with a New York federal court ordering Microsoft to hand over data stored in Ireland to American investigators, there is a business case for storing data in jurisdictions with a strong ethos of data protection. And that is more likely to mean Germany than the ‘Wild West’ of light touch, Ireland. Yet, since the Snowden revelations, while data protection, privacy, and surveillance have become major issues in Europe leading to increased friction between the EU and US, no Irish media outlet has assigned journalists to cover the data beat. While groups like Digital Rights Ireland successfully take the Irish government to the European Court of Justice over excessive EU-mandated mass surveillance, technology correspondents are more likely to report on the latest iPhone launch, business correspondents obsess over the corporation tax rate, and legal correspondents rarely venture outside the national courts. It is left to a few reporters such as the Irish Times’ Karlin Lillington to document the changing legal and technology landscape. Noonan’s budget did recognise the importance of data to the corporate sector. The new 6.25% ‘knowledge development box’ tax rate, touted as a tax incentive to companies to develop new technologies in Ireland, will apply to “customer lists”, according to the draft Companies Bill published days later. But with data at risk if stored in Ireland, that may not be enough, particularly since the knowledge box is not a purely Irish innovation, with similar schemes already in place in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In taking an approach based on tax incentives rather than properly implemented regulation, Noonan too is in danger of preparing to fight the last war. •

By Rónán Lynch If you’re one of the lucky top ten per cent of earners in Ireland, you probably feel well represented on talk radio. For the other ninety percent, an exasperated tweet or text message, or a few minutes giving out on Liveline is the most you can expect. Libel laws constrain radio researchers and producers and make them nervous about giving airtime to random contributors. Don’t feel totally put out though: You have options and this article will  arm you with the necessary information and tips for getting through and becoming part  of the public dialogue. Broadcasters are obliged to represent a diversity of voices from different geographical regions and backgrounds, so there are avenues for Irish citizens to have their views directly represented on national radio. All too often, radio hosts reflexively turn to authoritative-sounding experts and commentators drawn from Ireland’s elite, effectively narrowing public discourse and closing down debate. A 2014 research paper on Irish radio news showed that a stunning 95% of sources appearing on morning radio during late 2008 to talk about the banking crisis were elite official sources. Suspecting that mid-morning radio might suffer the same lopsided overrepresentation, Village turned its attention to the Marian Finucane show and found that more than 80% of the sources on the Sunday news review hour fitted into the category of elite official sources. If you listen to public or private radio and have a sense that programmes don’t reflect a wide array of opinions, you won’t be surprised to find that radio news and talk shows overwhelmingly reflect the opinions of the elite. Anyone lucky enough to spend a bit of time in radio studios will know that outside of venting opportunities such as ‘Liveline’, the ‘ordinary citizen’ is regarded with fear, liable to provoke a libel case or fire off an opinion that cuts sharply across the radio consensus. Elite sources, on the other hand, will rarely go off-message. Earlier this year, Kevin Rafter of DCU published research titled ‘Voices in the crisis: The role of media elites in interpreting the banking collapse’, investigating what he called ‘official sources’ on Irish radio. The preponderance of elite voices on news radio is already established by studies including a number from American sociologist William Hoynes, though it’s worth noting that Hoynes and Rafter acknowledge that the dominance of elite voices doesn’t necessarily mean a convergence of elite opinion, for some journalists, politicians and academics may take positions highly critical of the status quo or strive to represent minority voices or broaden political discourse. Public media in Ireland has a charter to represent regional, cultural and political diversity and Rafter set about investigating elite voices in the Irish context, focusing on the coverage of the financial crisis on the morning news shows on Newstalk and RTÉ during the period from 30 September 2008 to 24 December 2008, the three months following the announcement of the banking guarantee. Rafter’s work confirmed the dominance of official sources, which is interesting given the dominant view in Irish media that ‘nobody saw the crash coming”’ and also in light of Julian Mercille’s study showing that the media have largely taken pro-austerity positions. It’s also clear that deference to official sources limited the debate on alternative responses to the crisis. The research concluded that the coverage was “overwhelmingly reflected through the views of official sources” and was overwhelmingly male. About 95% of the coverage came from official sources such as journalists (36%), business and city sources (24%), politicians (23%) and academics (12%). Consumer groups (1%) and union representatives (3%) made up most of the remainder. Rafter refers to the voices of journalists in this context as “interpretive journalism”, as the journalists were invited not only to provide up-to-date coverage but also to provide ‘interpretation and context’. There’s a second circle of limitation at work here, as journalists tend to draw on official sources for most of their news, and then are interviewed by other journalists who rely on a mix of journalists and other official sources. There was some difference in representation on the two stations as business voices were more prominent on Newstalk (32%) than on RTÉ (12%), while RTÉ gave more time to politicians (28%) as against Newstalk’s 19 per cent. Where politicians featured in the debate, almost three out of four  were drawn from parties that supported the introduction of the banking guarantee. So, at a critical juncture in Irish history, news sources leaned heavily on official sources to frame and interpret the debate, but it’s worth investigating whether this was a once-off phenomenon: How do the numbers add up in a broader context? Not wanting to pick on the public service, in this issue Village looks at the Pat Kenny Show. Kenny, a veteran broadcaster with four decades at RTÉ as a radio and television host, moved to Newstalk last year to begin ‘The Pat Kenny Show’ in direct competition with his former morning show ‘Today’ on RTÉ, with a new presenter and sped-up jingle. Newstalk’s mandate is to provide an alternative to RTÉ, but the move to bag Kenny arguably resulted in a duplication of Kenny’s previous RTÉ show. He replaced Tom Dunne’s more entertainment-focused offering. The arrival of Kenny was accompanied by a huge ‘Move the Dial’ advertising campaign. RTE perceived the threat as serious and chose to address this by replacing Kenny with a journalist regarded as a political heavyweight, Seán O’Rourke. Newstalk may have persuaded thousands of listeners to move the dial further to the right after poaching Kenny from RTÉ but if it hopes to re-invent the morning talk show, it is not going the right way about it. Research by Village shows that ‘The Pat Kenny Show’ falls into a well-established pattern on Irish talk and news radio: the guests are mostly well-paid professionals from a narrow range of occupations and although Kenny’s show employs mostly female researchers, female guests account for only one in four voices on the show. The fact

By Gerard Cunningham. The runaway success of ‘Serial’, the podcast from ‘This American Life’ producer Sarah Koenig documenting a 15-year-old murder case, has energised scrutiny of the format as a way for news outlets to attract audiences. ‘Serial’ is simply the most successful of a number of professionally produced podcasts, and it is no surprise that it comes from a public-radio background. Its parent show, ‘This American Life’, has already established itself as a podcasting hit, as have many other shows from the National Public Radio (NPR) stable, such as ‘99% Invisible’ and ‘Snap Judgment’. On the face of it, there would seem to be fewer prospects for Irish news outlets hoping to get into podcasting. Despite a high-power campaign beforehand, the first ‘Flannery Files’ attracted an appropriately embarrassing response, with barely 600 downloads in the first week. A softball blueshirt-on-blueshirt interview was always unlikely to ignite the popular imagination in 2014, despite the compere being soccer’s Bill O’Herlihy. Podcasting has long moved from the amateur-enthusiast stage in the US. ‘99% Invisible’, for example, began as a ‘garage’ podcast, and is now broadcast. But it is still in its low-key infancy in Ireland. RTÉ places some of its content online, but although for example the ‘Documentary On One’ app contains the world’s largest archive of documentaries, the RTé Player app can be clunky to use. Most newspapers have barely engaged with podcasting. An exception is the Irish Times, which has put a major effort into several shows, covering politics, business, arts and culture. One show however stands out from the crowd. ‘Second Captains’, from the team who presented ‘Off The Ball’ on Newstalk, before they were dismissed for having the temerity to ask for greater resources, regularly pulls audiences of 20-30,000 listeners for its unique gloss on sport. This compares to figures for the other Irish Times podcasts of roughly between one tenth and one fifth of that figure. Although numbers for downloads from iTunes and Stitcher are not available, they show a similar pattern, with ‘Second Captains’ outperforming all the other podcasts combined. To put those numbers in context, proportionate to population it means ‘Second Captains’ is doing as well in Irish markets as ‘Serial’ is in the US – a remarkable achievement. The quirky humour of ‘Second Captains’ led by the likes of former Village writer, polymath Ken Early, has always made it stand out of from the crowd. The show also benefits from having an established legacy audience from its time as a broadcast programme on Newstalk. Indeed it now offers a TV version on RTé 2. By contrast the other Irish Times offerings sound like radio as usual, comprising panel discussions and one-on-one interviews. The newly released Irish Times app, which allows listeners to hear podcasts directly on smartphones, is likely to build this audience even more. Exploited properly, by offering options such as ‘Most Listened’ or ‘Editor’s Picks’, this could introduce audiences to other new shows. However, it would require shows that offer something scintillating or at least unusual. Packages taking a different approach to reporting could build on the same audience desire for something different that ‘Second Captains’ has so successfully exploited. Given the number of independent producers and freelance journalists experimenting with audio, an imaginative Irish Times could do worse than set aside a budget to incubate and develop such new ideas. For now, funding for such projects is reliant on advertising, sponsorship and listener subscriptions, using models such as crowdfunding, donation requests or paywalls. And while the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) does fund independent production, the Sound+Vision fund steers away from news/current affairs to focus on documentary and fiction, and is limited by the Broadcasting Act to works transmitted over the air. This seems unlikely to change anytime soon, with reforms on television licensing now long-fingered. The upside of an absence of this funding however, is that podcasters are freed from the restrictions imposed by BAI regulation, on broadcasters, although they remain subject to the Press Council code of practice. Lyra McKee, a Belfast-based freelance journalist recently crowdfunded a book on the murder of UPP MP Robert Bradford. Her pitch, publishing one chapter of the book online at a time as her investigation progressed, both mirrored and predated the ‘Serial’ model. “With the Bradford book, I was researching and writing a distinctly Northern Irish story yet it attracted readers from all over the world, as far away as South Africa”, says McKee. “I think we need to stop thinking in terms of geographical markets when it comes to media content. Podcasting in many ways  is just another way of telling a story and if you’re good at telling stories, borders become irrelevant because the Internet is a borderless territory. The Irish – North and South – also have the advantage of having a huge diaspora who want to find ways to connect with ‘home’”. She’s a persuasive advocate for the genre. “Advertising and sponsorship is certainly one revenue stream; I think we’ll also see reader-funding/pledges becoming much more popular too. You don’t need a huge market to make it work, you just need a core group of really passionate fans. You may have only 300 fans who absolutely love what you do but if they love it so much they’re willing to donate €10 a month, say, then you have a means of making a living. The problem to date hasn’t been that people won’t pay for this stuff; it’s that we haven’t given them anything worth paying for. Take the example of ‘Serial’ – they’re asking for donations this week. Am I going to donate? Absolutely. Each episode of the podcast has left me on the edge of my seat. They’ve given me an experience worth paying for. They’ve turned me into an evangelist – I’ve been telling everyone I know to listen to it – by creating something really good. It’s a fundamental principle underpinning the ‘How do we get people to pay for content?’ debate yet it