Old media's new reality: more pressure, less clout

Whether newspapers or TV exert more influence on Ireland is unlikely to matter much in the age of new media

THERE WAS something other-worldly about the exchanges between Conor Brady, formerly of this parish, and RTÉ’s John Bowman on radio this week arguing the toss over the relative credit which television or newspapers should get for influencing change and confronting government in 1960s Ireland.

To many, including those active on social media, it will have been curious to listen to these Olympians of old media squabbling over their respective platforms’ influence in shaping the Ireland of five decades ago.

The Brady-Bowman exchanges flowed from the recent documentary Battle Station, made by Bowman with David Nally, which sought to trace RTÉ television’s relationship with politics, religion and culture.

In an opinion piece on this page, Brady had strong praise for the documentary’s production qualities and, while accepting the undeniable fact that television was the catalyst for dramatic social and political shifts in Ireland, he contended that other elements required for change got insufficient attention.

He included among those other elements a liberal and activist Supreme Court and a flourishing in political science but, try as he might to dress it as a call for wider context, Brady’s primary motive was to assert the significance of newspapers generally, and this newspaper in particular. Myles Dungan refereed the Bowman-Brady bout in Pat Kenny’s absence. While, as one would expect, his two guests were exceedingly polite to each other, some blood was drawn. Bowman won on points. Brady’s contention that there had been insufficient regard for the role of other change actors was churlish, since the subject of Battle Station was the role of television in particular rather than media generally.

Brady’s contribution at its core was a “what about us” cry from a newspaperman clearly irked that the role of his medium in shaping modern Ireland had been insufficiently acknowledged.

There is no getting away from the fact of television’s immediate impact and the dominance it established as the forum for national debate.

Teilifís Éireann changed things utterly because it operated on the basis that there were no limits on what could and would be talked about on air. Brian Walsh and others may have been writing groundbreaking judgments that breathed new life into our Constitution, but apart from lawyers and litigants, these had limited immediate impact.

The Irish Times and other newspapers may have been creating ripples among their own readership segments, but television was the big change agent. There were also, as Brady points out, “clear-minded analysts” who sought to bring “political science to bear on issues that had been smothered in rhetoric” – but it was television that made stars of the best of this generation of political scientists. Television gave them a means for communicating their insight in a way newspapers could never have done.

This week’s Brady-Bowman clash was a row about historic influence. It left for another day more significant questions about the relative influence of television and newspapers in more recent times and indeed what, if any, influence or impact either can hope to exercise in the future.

Some years ago in research conducted on the reasons for the different outcomes in the two Irish referendums on the Nice Treaty, Prof Richard Sinnott of University College Dublin sought to assess which media organ had most influence on the shift in voter behaviour. Respondents were asked which source of information and debate they relied on in seeking to inform themselves about the campaign and the issues. TV news and current affairs programmes won by a long distance. In second place, albeit well behind, was talk radio.

Newspapers were considerably further back the field and, of this later group, The Irish Times was at the back of the pack.

When Sinnott presented his findings to a gathering of journalists, politicians and students after the second referendum, a number of questioners asked why it appeared political actors had paid newspapers – and this newspaper in particular – so much attention since television and radio were exponentially more important. The answer lay in the reality that the influence of The Irish Times was disproportionate because most of those who edited, produced and presented television and radio read the newspaper. It therefore exerts a disproportionate influence on setting the RTÉ news and current affairs agenda and, therefore, the national news agenda.

One often hears reporters working, for example, for the Irish Examiner, quietly complain how a story they had written got no traction in television and radio news only to find it dominate the airways when it’s covered by The Irish Times some weeks later.

The Irish Times is important in its own milieu and is fortunate that, to date at least, this milieu is disproportionately represented in those who shape broadcast media. That is changing, as is everything about our media. Social media, blogs and micro-blogs now provide a variety of means through which those wanting to make news or offer views can get the attention of broadcast media or communicate their message directly.

If change in media continues or intensifies on current trajectories, then all newspapers will struggle to exert even a fraction of the influence they currently hold. That is in addition to the commercial pressures they face in order to survive. Broadcast news is likely to be better at adapting, but it, too, will have to adjust to a less significant role.

The question of whether it was television or newspapers what done it matters when considering social and political change in Ireland since the 1960s, but is unlikely to matter much in the coming age of new media.

Brady warned this week that it is dangerous for any powerful institutions to lose perspective or develop a magnified view of their own significance. Indeed it is. RTÉ is not the only media organ vulnerable to such distorted vision.