Journalism must fight the next battle, not the last

November 2014 45

ETTING it right next time” was the

theme of the 15th Cleraun media con-

ference, 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 compro-

mised 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 corpo-

rate 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 cus-

tomers, 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 protec-

tion 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 tech-

nology companies actually want stringent

regulation. While Google may complain

about the Right to be Forgotten, the corpo-

rations 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 fed-

eral court ordering Microsoft to hand over

data stored in Ireland to American investi-

gators, 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 journal-

ists 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 cor-

respondents are more likely

to report on the latest iPhone

launch, business correspond-

ents obsess over the corporation

tax rate, and legal correspond-

ents rarely venture outside the

national courts. It is left to a

few reporters such as the Irish

Times’ Karlin Lillington to doc-

ument the changing legal and

technology landscape.

Noonan’s budget did recog-

nise the importance of data to

the corporate sector. The new

6.25% ‘knowledge develop-

ment box’ tax rate, touted as

a tax incentive to companies

to develop new technologies

in Ireland, will apply to “cus-

tomer 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 innova-

tion, with similar schemes already in place in

the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

In taking an approach based on tax incen-

tives rather than properly implemented

regulation, Noonan too is in danger of pre-

paring to ght the last war. •

CLERAUN CONFERENCE MEDIA

It will be over data protection

not economic reporting.

By Gerard Cunningham

Journalism must ght the

next battle, not the last

No Irish

media outlet

has assigned

journalists

to cover the

data beat.

Technology

correspondents

are more likely

to report on the

latest iPhone

launch

“