44 April 2015
D
R Julien Mercille is a lecturer
in geography with the School
of Geography, Planning and
Environmental Policy in
UCD, working on US foreign
policy, political economy and the eco-
nomic crisis. He appeared before the
Oireachtas committee of inquiry into
the banking crisis inquiry during its
module on media coverage of the prop-
erty bubble.
Mercille’s critique of Irish prop-
erty coverage is summed up best in the
following two paragraphs from his Oire-
achtas appearance:
“There are two main measures to
determine whether property prices are
in bubble territory: the price-to-earn-
ings ratio and the price-to-income ratio.
The Economist m ag a zi ne used t hose indi-
cators to warn about property bubbles
around the world early on. In 2002, it
stated that the Irish housing market had
been ‘displaying bubble-like symptoms
in recent years’, and, in 2003, it calcu-
lated that Ireland’s property market was
overvalued by 42% relative to the aver-
age of the previous three decades.
In Ireland, the economists David
McWilliams and Morgan Kelly identi-
fied the problem and warned about it
early on.
However, overwhelmingly, the Irish
analysts and institutions, including the
media, maintained that there was no
bubble and that the boom would even-
tually end in a soft landing. Indeed, there
is a clear discrepancy between coverage
of the housing bubble before and after it
burst. Before 2008, the media tended to
largely ignore it, and it was only months
after it started deflating that reality had
to be faced. Once the housing market
collapsed, the media simply could not
ignore its downwards trajectory, hence
the increased coverage. I have included
two figures showing the number of arti-
cles on the housing bubble that appeared
in newspapers by year. On average, the
Irish Times had 5.5 times more articles
on the bubble per year in 2008–11 than
in 1996–2007.
Similarly, the Irish Independent and
the Sunday Independent had on aver-
age 12.5 times more such articles in
2008–11 than in 1999–2007.
Moreover, the few articles
published during the ear-
lier period often denied
that there was a bubble.
For example, there were
articles in the Irish Times
entitled ‘Study refutes
any house price ‘bubble’’
and ‘House prices ‘set
for soft landing’,’ while
the Irish Independent
and Sunday Independent
had headlines such as ‘NCB
rejects house value threat from
burst bubble,’ ‘House prices not about
to fall soon, insist auctioneers,’ ‘Price
of houses ‘not over-valued’ says new
report,’ and ‘There is no property bubble
to burst, despite doomsayers.’ In partic-
ular, between 2000 and 2007, the Irish
Times published more than 40,000 arti-
cles about the economy, but only 78 of
MEDIA Julien Mercille
Interviewed by Gerard Cunningham
Julien Mercille
Julien Mercille
MEDIA
INTERVIEW
April 2015 45
these were about the property bubble,
or 0.2%. This is small coverage for what
was the most important economic story
in those years”.
Q: Were you expecting the Spanish
Inquisition?
A: Probably, yes, maybe not as much as
happened, but because the topic at the
inquiry was the media I thought the
media would cover it. I’d say I was sur-
prised more by how they criticised my
work, but [the Committee] used my stud-
ies, my work, for their questions on the
following people who came, the newspa-
per editors, so in that way it was useful.
Q Were you surprised at the media
reaction?
A: A little bit, yes. I’m not surprised that
they criticised it, but I suppose I was
expecting a bit less. Every newspaper,
every national title, wrote something
directly against me, against my work. I
didn’t think they would be that aggres-
sive, if I can use that word.
Q: You were the subject of columns
by writers from Dan O’Brien in the
Independent to Michael Clifford in
the Irish Examiner. What reasons
would you put forward for that?
A: Yeah, officially I never even included
the Irish Examiner in my work. I think
it’s that the media is not often held
accountable and they had to be, to come
to the parliament for that, so I think
that’s the main thing, they don’t like to
have to explain themselves.
I think it is also the case that if you are
a top journalist and you’re accepted as
such in the media industry, when some-
one challenges the media you have to
show that you’re defending the media,
to show that you’re on the side of your
employer.
Mick Clifford is not one of the worst,
he is one of the better ones in the main-
stream. I had been on Vincent Browne
with him before, and we had the same
kind of debate there. So in that way, I
wasn’t surprised. Maybe they asked
someone who knows me – maybe he had
his thoughts ready to respond.
Q: How does someone who starts off as
a geographer become someone who
ends up working in media analysis,
media criticism?
A: Well, I did my PhD in US foreign
policy, on geopolitics, and my main
interest is current affairs, social sciences
at large, so geography is good for that.
It’s a pretty broad field, and that’s why
I did the media. There is an economic
crisis now, and I thought, it is essential
to understand it if you are an academic in
social sciences, so I jumped on it, and it’s
more because of an interest in social sci-
ence and current affairs generally.
Q: At the Cleraun conference last
year, Dan O’Brien said that he had
asked you for the raw data from
your research and you were unable
to provide it, a statement he made
again in a column after your appear-
ance before the Oireachtas.
A: Yeah, Dan O’Brien, he asked me for my
dat a a nd I told hi m I don ’t have t he dat a he
is referring to, the study he is interested
in is the media in the property bubble. I
watched the ‘Prime Time’ shows on RTÉ,
and he says that, and I said he remained
vague, he didn’t give any clear warning
about the housing bubble, and then he
says that he did in fact, but then again
after that he says again that he never
saw the housing bubble. I don’t know
how both can be correct, but that’s his
thing, so I said Dan, I don’t have statis-
tical tests and all, I just watched the TV,
that’s what I did.
I don’t really understand exactly what
it is that he wants, I could always watch
the shows with him.
But another problem is that the shows
are gone. When I did my study, they were
online, and now they’ve been taken down
by RTÉ. I don’t know if it had any thing to
do with my study.
Q: What should media do dierently?
Not necessarily to spot the next
property bubble, since we’re prob-
ably hyper-vigilant to that risk,
but to spot the next impending dis-
aster? What should the media be
doing in order to spot the next big
problem before it becomes a big
problem?
A: Well there are two things. Encourag-
ing more investigative work on the part
of journalists, encouraging more criti-
cal viewpoints, hiring journalists who
don’t just repeat what the government
says more or less. The other point is that
the media needs to be decentralised, to
become more diverse so that instead of
having two or three big companies who
control most of what we read or see,
having maybe smaller, more people-
controlled media outlets if you want to
use that term, as opposed to corporate
MEDIA Julien Mercille
controlled or government controlled
media outlets – and cut down maybe
advertising revenues because that has
an influence on property advertising for
example.
There are a lot of commercial interests
in other words that come into play, and if
you reduce that influence, depend more
on funding from foundations, readers
subscriptions, you gain independence
and accuracy.
Of course, you cannot pay your jour-
nalists as much as when you have
advertising revenues and you cannot
have a corporate structure that’s really
big. Journalism has to be based, not on
money and profits, but instead based on
finding the truth of whatever is going
on.
Q: You’re been writing a weekly
column for Broadsheet (http://
broadsheet.ie). Is that a comment
on the need for a diverse media, or
were they just the ones who hap-
pened to ask you?
A: It’s a way for me to write what I think
is important. In Ireland there are not
many alternative media outlets, so that
is one of them. There are maybe small
ones, but this one is also read by young
people.
Q: What you you read yourself? Blogs,
mainstream media?
A: I read everything. The Sunday Busi-
ness Post is very good, it’s very serious,
it’s not as fluffy and as vague as some of
the other newspapers. The Irish Times
has some good reporters, all the papers
have some good reporters. The alterna-
tive press, yeah I read whatever is out
there, mostly individuals that I think
are good, if we triangulate like that we
can get at the information. •
I’ll take all ve

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