Don’t shoot the messenger – the media has a duty to tell it like it is

IN the same week that George Lee – Ireland’s gloomiest economic commentator, according to some – has decided to test his popularity with the public, a hitherto largely unknown recruitment consultant sprang to prominence by sending out a mass email attacking the media’s alleged role in unnecessarily undermining public confidence in the economy.

David Bloch runs a recruitment firm called Brightwater and having read an article based on his email in a newspaper, I asked him to join us on The Last Word on Wednesday. Bloch repeated his claims that the media is reporting everything that is wrong about the economy while ignoring the positives. He claimed a link between sentiment and the economy and said the media was depressing the population and thereby destroying the country.

He claimed 92% of his respondents agreed the Irish media was “helping to destroy” Ireland. He summed up the media’s reporting as “not true and unhelpful when we are trying to move on... The media seems to have taken every statistic and turned it against the country”.

He had his supporters, judging by the text messages that flooded into the programme, from people who have become depressed by all they’ve heard. Equally, he had detractors who felt he was verging on the delusional in trying to ignore the reality and in proclaiming sight of the first green shoots of recovery based on some highly selective use of statistics.

Now I’ll admit much of the media is notoriously thin-skinned about criticism of its performance. When we make mistakes, many of us are slow to admit them and slower again to apologise for them, if we do at all. So does Bloch have a point? Is media coverage of our economic crisis making things worse and impeding our ability to recover?

If I accept Bloch’s arguments are made in good faith – and having met him I have no reason to doubt his sincerity – I hope he’ll accept that I make mine in good faith too. He’s right about media coverage playing a role in setting or denting public confidence. It would be unrealistic to argue it has no effect. However, the more useful assessment is of how influential it is, where it ranks by comparison with other factors.

I doubt, for example, that consumer spending decisions this month will be affected much by what is reported in the media. It will be the harsh reality of the opening of pay packets today, for those who get paid by the week, or at the end of the month, when the full impact of the tax levies on income is felt, that will be the most important determining factor.

It is issues relating to job security and pay cuts that have persuaded many people to postpone or abandon expensive purchases such as property and cars.

The Government has told us there will be more tax increases in next December’s budget, that child benefit will be cut, that other social welfare benefits are under threat and that public spending will have to be cut. That is not a media construct. To suggest that a gap of €25bn in the public finances has emerged because the media has persuaded people to stop spending is as about as accurate an analysis of what has happened as saying it is merely all due to the international credit crunch.

The latter is a favourite line parroted by government people, as if everything would have been all right in Ireland had it not been for what happened overseas, that no major policy failures had taken place, that the property bubble on which all the Government’s plans were based would not have burst. Now they’re adding another line to their defence: it was all George Lee’s fault for regularly giving a Fine Gael analysis on RTE’s Nine O’Clock News.

Some Fianna Fáil members are trying to turn Lee’s arrival in Fine Gael last week into a witch-hunt against RTÉ, the implication being that they will try to control the station’s future output.

“It was biased reporting of the previous government that damaged this economy and this state,” Senator Terry Leyden declared to the Seanad on Wednesday. So let’s imagine Lee had never broadcast any of his reports or comments. Does anyone really think things would be one iota better? Does anyone think balance would have been served by allowing the likes of Leyden the opportunity on every news bulletin to posit an alternative view of the world to Lee’s?

He was among one of a large number of high-profile journalists, broadcasters and economists who warned dangerous conditions were being created that ran the risk of a major property crash that would undermine personal and public finances, cause unemployment and obliterate perceived levels of wealth.

They may have predicted what would happen, but they didn’t cause it. That remains the responsibility of a government that failed to regulate the activities of reckless bankers and borrowers because it was dependent on the associated tax revenues to continue currying favour with the electorate.

If the media had the ability to influence the behaviour of viewers, listeners and readers to the extent claimed by those now so critical of it, then why didn’t more people take heed of the so-called doom-mongers from a much earlier stage? There was no shortage of pieces arguing that property prices had gone too far ahead and that ordinary people were borrowing too much money. Few enough people took any notice. That wasn’t their fault. Now people are complaining that the media didn’t tell them what was going wrong.

If anything the media was too concerned with giving so-called balance and was bullied into talking things up on occasion by interests who claimed we couldn’t enjoy success and wanted only to stop it.

SO WHAT about Bloch’s demand that we should be more positive? Actually, media owners and employees share his vested interest in “talking things up”. Only RTÉ is funded by licence fee income; every other broadcaster and newspaper survives by way of commercial revenues.

Journalists have experienced or seen colleagues take pay cuts. That may influence our mood and coverage but equally it may mean we’re inclined to putting a brave face on things too. The temptation is there to try to “spin”, to pretend that things are better than they are.

If the media is to perform its primary function – which is to inform truthfully, honestly and accurately – then it cannot deliberate ignore what’s bad and try to concentrate only on the good. The public are not fools. They will not stand for deliberate deception. A newspaper that published good news stories only – by deliberately ignoring bad news – would lack credibility. A radio programme that did not reflect what is happening to the best of its ability would suffer similarly.

Just because we ignore what is happening does not mean it will go away. I know it can be argued the media is ignoring the good news. If anything, we are overdoing the good news for fear depression will lead to use of the off-button or binning of the newspaper. And there’s an old maxim that media people and consumers should remember: “News is what someone somewhere doesn’t want you to print: all else is advertising.” So sorry, David Bloch. We must tell it as it is, to the best of our ability, without spin. If we fail, it won’t be for the want of trying.

The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.