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44 May-June 2023 May-June 2023 45
Media trust: trending downward
Over the last half century there’s been a secular decline in
media trust across the world. In 1976 72% of US citizens felt
trust in the media. By 2022 it was just 35%. In Ireland and
Britain there’s a similar downward historical trajectory but
at current levels of 47% and 46% respectively, things aren’t
as bad.
The cause
An Irish Times article (18 Feb) - “Why is trust in media
declining? Maybe it’s not us, it’s you” – dismissed the idea
that declining trust was a function of declining performance.
A “fallacious explanation” made more fanciful by the
“considerable evidence it’s gotten better”.
No evidence of improved performance was provided. But
from a political economy perspective there’s plenty of
evidence of decline.
The model: consolidate, control and
command
It’s clear that media ownership/control is more concentrated
than ever.
Six conglomerates (AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Disney,
Newscorp and Viacom) control 90% of all US media.
Just three media groups (Associated Newspapers/DMG,
News Corp & Reach) control 90% of all UK print media.
Only two of our national papers are Irish: the rest is owned
by Associated Papers/DMG, News Corp, Reach or MediaHuis.
When MediaHuis bought INM, publisher of Independent
newspapers, a few years ago it had 50% of the daily market
and over 65% of the Sunday market. Since then, The Irish
Times acquired The Examiner, and the newsrooms of the
Trust in MAINSTREAM MEDIA:
At 47% trust, our
newspapers and
broadcast media
need to abandon their
smugness and fight for
credibility, by improving
standards
By Cillian Doyle
MEDIA
from boom to bust?
Firly cosy
44 May-June 2023 May-June 2023 45
Evening Herald and the Sunday World, and The
Mirror and The Star, were merged.
Declining industry fortunes
This consolidation can be contrasted with the
number of exits from the market, particularly
from local papers. Circulation and print
advertising revenues are at historic lows and
plugging the gap with digital advertising
revenues has proved dicult.
In 2005 the US had 8,891 newspapers but
since then over 2,500 ceased publication
(averaging two a week). In Ireland over the last
decade 16 paid-for weekly newspapers have
closed, with more losses among free newspapers.
Reach PLC, publisher of Irish titles including
RSVP, Irish Mirror, Irish Daily Star and DublinLive,
is reviewing its workforce, putting more than 420
roles at risk of redundancy and with 192 editorial
roles to be cut across titles in the UK and Ireland.
Peter Vandermeersch, CEO of Mediahuis
Ireland, told RTÉ Radio 1’s This Week programme
that daily printed newspapers would disappear
within the next ten years. Partly because of this,
Mediahuis is seeking voluntary redundancies
from among its 350 editorial workers in national
and local publications in coming weeks.
In December the Fingal Independent closed
followed by the closure of the Newry Reporter
after 155 years in existence. The average local
newspaper here now employs 50% of its 2000
stang complement. Local newspapers have
generally enjoyed more trust than their national
counterparts.
With worsening industry conditions, the
business models and the way in which journalism
itself is done have changed. As a result, papers
like The Irish Times, New York Times, Guardian,
etc, began venturing into other business areas to
maintain profitability.
The Irish Times has long been dependent on
revenue from its property supplements; and
famously bought myhome.ie for €50m in 2006.
Academic Julien Mercille noted that The Irish
Times published 40,000 plus articles about the
economy between 2000-2007 only 78 – or 0.2%
of total – were about the property bubble.
Muckrakers need not apply
When famed investigative journalist Seymour
Hersh was recently asked why The New York
Times had largely ignored his Nord Stream
exposé, he said the paper he worked for no longer
click-driven imperatives of today. These rely more
on access-based journalism. But speed comes at
the cost of significance.
Political editors increasingly operate like
relationship managers staying on good terms
with those in power hoping that leaks = scoops.
This creates a more reticent dynamic and a
reluctance to bite the hand that feeds them. Ask
yourself why some of the biggest stories of late
were broken by small publications like the Ditch
and Village.
The ideological/class congruence of the media
and elite opinion is so obvious that pointing it out
feels clichéd. The Managing Director and Editor
of The Irish Times had salaries (2022) which
placed them in the top 1% of earners. The average
salary at the paper puts you in the top 10%.
So, articles like “Rent Pressure Zone is costing
my niece €620 a month in rental income” (6
existed, describing what’s left as a
“merchandising company”. Recall that Hersh
won a Pulitzer Prize (1970) for exposing the My
Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and later
covered the Watergate scandal for The New York
Times.
The more time-consuming investigative work
old muckrakers like Hersh won awards/
admiration for has fallen prey to the fast-paced
Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine
we’ve been subjected to countless
editorials and opinion pieces telling us
that it’s “outdated”, “immature”, and could
precipitate the sky falling in
46 May-June 2023 May-June 2023 PB
March), can be run, as an end to a moratorium on
evictions was beginning to set o a tsunami of evictions
and homelessness, and nobody had the self-awareness
to say, “maybe now’s not the time to run this one”.
Ethical decline
Basic ethical practices are also in decline. Investigative
journalist Matt Taibbi’s latest book “Hate Inc.” points out
how simple things like aording someone a comment,
dierentiating between fact and opinion, protecting
sources, and not intruding on someone’s privacy unless
it’s in the public interest, are relegated.
One of our papers recently ran a story about a well-
known disability campaigner who’d sold one of her late
child’s toys to pay her bills. No permission or comment
was sought. A family photo was used, again without
permission, and as the individual made clear through
social media, unnecessary distress was caused.
Pick up an Irish paper and you’ll find many articles are
syndicated from the New York Times, Guardian, Telegraph,
etc. There’s also heavy reliance on news agencies such as
Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. The
days when either these papers or news agencies had
prized foreign correspondents like Robert Fisk, Chris
Hedges or Patrick Cockburn reporting from conflict zones
as non-embedded journalists seem long gone.
With the pool of news, views and analysis shrinking
and becoming increasingly homogenised, media
pluralism suers; alternative views are limited, with
implications for fairness and accuracy in reporting.
Fruits of dysfunctional homogeneity
Three recent examples are illustrative of this.
Neutrality
Consider our media’s fixation with abandoning our
hugely popular position of neutrality. Editorial decisions
were clearly made across a suspiciously wide range of
our press to try to shift public opinion. Since the outbreak
of the Ukraine war, we’ve been subjected to countless
editorials and opinion pieces telling us that it’s
“outdated” and “immature”.
Spies
Secondly there’s been the revelations of foreign spies
from dierent countries working at the heart of the Irish
State. Surely no laughing matter. It’s rare that reality runs
a natural field experiment to gauge media bias, and yet
that’s just what happened.
The allegation that a former junior Fine Gael sta
member may have been a Russian spy received significant
coverage. Yet when it came to the allegation that a British
spy is currently operating at senior levels of government
– silence.
Considering the sensitivity of Brexit negotiations and
how relations with the British were supposedly at the
“lowest point ever”, you’d be forgiven for thinking this
would have warranted the same, or at least some, media
scrutiny. But apparently not.
VAT reductions supporting independent news press
(not magazines)
Thirdly, it’s worth noting the absence of any solidarity
shown by the mainstream print media in noting that news
magazines were omitted from the new 0% rate of VAT,
which has applied since January. Paschal Donohue, as
Minister for Finance, removed what The Irish Times
described as a “tax on information”, much to their
financial advantage.
According to the Minister, “This is in line with the
government’s commitment to support an independent
press and the Future of Media Commission’s
recommendation on this matter”. Yet it is as if independent
magazines are not part of an independent press.
The Future of Media Commission purported to
recognise the need to support “print and digital
publications” (which unambiguously comprehend
magazines), but by way of “support for national and local
newspapers” (which omits magazines). Given their often
more adversarial nature (think Private Eye, the New
Yorker, etc) perhaps our home-grown versions like Village
or the Phoenix, which enjoy considerable trust of their
readers, were considered a little too “independent” for
the government’s liking.
The Medium is the Message
Media literacy is necessary to guard against
misinformation or disinformation, and for understanding
the role that ownership, political/commercial bias,
advertising, syndication, and sources, play as filters for
the news that we consume. At the same time when it
comes to media many people recognise that we’re living
in a transitionary period.
People can increasingly share information peer to peer
through the likes of social media.
Countering this disintermediation is a process of
re-intermediation occurs whereby people seek out new
mediums in the form of independent media. Podcaster
Joe Rogan averaged 11 million viewers per episode in
2021 whilst Fox and MSNBC’s flagship shows (Tucker
Carlson and Rachel Maddow) received 3.2 million and 2.2
million respectively. YouTuber Russell Brand has almost
6.5 million subscribers which is comparable to BBC News
24’s 6 million viewers a week.
The popularity of Rogan and Brand poses a direct
threat whatever you think of them. The Guardian’s attack
on Brand, by its leftie gatekeeper George Monbiot, in
March, betrays this unease.
A critic recently said that journalism was dead, and
distrust had dealt the final blow. But this misses the point
entirely. Yes, mainstream media no longer holds a
monopoly and yes distrust has sharply increased.
But any headbanger can start a blog, podcast or
YouTube channel and have some conspiratorial post/
video go viral. Some may even be able to build a large
following of the back of this.
The point to be gleaned is that today in the proliferation
of knowledge each of us needs increasingly to use the
tools of journalism to make sense of the world, meaning
we need to use trusted sources, seek out original source
material, consult the historical record, and try to cross-
check what passes as knowledge.
For in an age of growing media distrust these will be
the best defence against misinformation and
disinformation, wherever it derives.
Cillian Doyle is a political economist and policy advisor to
Sinn Féin. The views expressed are his own.
When Seymour
Hersh was asked
why the New York
Times had largely
ignored his Nord
Stream exposé,
he described
what’s left of
the paper he
worked for as a
“merchandising
company“
