Quality #JournalismMatters: Readers want it and our democracy depends on it

‘Journalism is what we need to make democracy work.' — Walter Cronkite

This week, the Irish Examiner joins national and local newspaper groups throughout the country in a Journalism Matters campaign to highlight — in a petition to our legislators and a reminder for our loyal readers — the importance of journalism and the unprecedented challenges faced by the publishing companies that produce it.

In daily and weekly issues across Ireland, our industry’s broadsheet, tabloid, and online platforms continue to inform, interpret, connect buyers with sellers, and entertain.

No apology is necessary when accepting that this, more or less, is what newspapers have been providing for demanding readerships — certainly in the Western world, and all the while mirroring the changing standards and manners of each age — since the opening decades of the 17th century, when better-late-than-never printers saw that Bibles were not the only publications that could be turned out on Gutenberg’s press (circa 1439).

From the basic business model on which our earliest newspapers were established grew a reporting tradition that survives — and thrives — to this day in Ireland and throughout the rest of the free world: The challenging, often laborious, time-consuming and increasingly costly investigative reporting that shines a light into dark places and uncovers incompetence in public services, villainy in business, and, in government and politics, corruption, duplicity, hypocrisy and mendacious spin.

Our journalists coverage of the Grace foster home scandal and the scandalous treatment of Garda whistleblowers are but two examples of this vital editorial work. There’s much more, of course: Cervical cancer screening; child abuse in Catholic and Protestant institutions; payments to politicians; the tracker mortgage racket and hepatitis blood contaminations.

Among examples from abroad that can be cited to support the proposition that good journalism matters are the Watergate revelations that brought down US president, Richard Nixon, the almost daily reporting on the White House fiascos that could see Donald Trump impeached and, nearer home, the exposure by Britain’s Daily Telegraph of the more-than-somewhat cavalier relationship that elected members of the House of Commons had with their expense claims.

The appetite among traditional newspaper publishers in Ireland for journalism of this calibre — the journalism that’s needed to make democracy work — is undiminished, as is the demand for news that can be read either on paper or via the online platforms of our established media companies. What is at risk, however, is the ability of publishers to continue funding quality journalism, when technological change and social media platforms — which refuse to accept their moral and legal responsibilities as publishers — have turned the industry’s business models upside down, if not quite inside out.

Fresh competition — or disruptors, as they’re now known in the jargon — cannot be wished away, any more than blacksmiths could have ignored the invention of the steam train.

News publishers, meeting the challenges of the new trading environment by investing in innovation, accept that the state has no role in keeping unprofitable, redundant enterprises on taxpayer-funded life-support machines.

The Journalism Matters campaign, however, is asking politicians to look at practical ways in which government can fashion a media landscape — now being polluted by torrents of fake news — in which publishing companies that contribute hundreds of millions to Ireland’s exchequer revenues and gross domestic product can ensure the survival of the quality journalism readers want and which our democracy must have.

Among them are measures that by no stretch of the imagination can be described as radical or inimical to the operation of a free and fair market. They are steps that have already been taken by governments — in Britain, France, and elsewhere in Europe — whose philosophical commitment to the economics of the marketplace is no less ardent than Fine Gael’s.

In its 2019 budget, the Government could cut value added tax on printed newspapers from its current 9% to 5%, with a view to reducing it as rapidly as possible to zero. Newspapers in the UK are Vat-free. It could establish a News Publishers Media Fund to incentivise innovation, investment, and quality journalism, funded in part, perhaps, by a levy on social media platforms.

It’s an idea that in Britain has not been ruled out by the Conservative government’s culture and media minister. The Government could invest in training schemes to help people become more media literate when reading and producing editorial content, and better able to discern what is true and what is false.

The Government also could reform this country’s excessively punitive libel laws, which are among the most oppressive in Europe; they were panned last year by the European Court of Human Rights. The latter noted an absence of safeguards against disproportionate damage awards, which could curb freedom of expression.

Our industry is asking only for an even playing field, on which it can continue to ensure that we have a democracy that works; on which the people can speak truth to power, so that those with power can be held to account.