Eurosceptic

The Irish media have a tendancy to avoid a scrap when it comes to reporting on European issues.

Journalism is constrained at every turn by self-censorship, by ideological, political biases that express themselves in the selection of stories and angles to pursue. But sometimes the "slant" that decides how a story is told is based on simpler psychological and institutional factors.

Covering the EU, for example, the Irish media's warm, fuzzy feeling often sounds like raw loyalty. In Britain, in a broadly similar media environment to our own, it's perfectly acceptable for the national press to be "Eurosceptical". In Ireland, it's virtually unheard-of for journalists on the Euro-beat to raise profound questions about the project. (Trivial questions may be raised when they are in the interest of Irish governments, eg during negotiations over fishing quotas or corporation-tax restrictions.)

This group-think sometimes seems to have more to do with drinking-circles in Brussels (where Irish journalists socialise with well-got Irish eurocrats) than with, say, any broader needs of the Irish business elite, though the latter must be a factor.

The bias means that the Irish media can't even enjoy a good scrap. In Ireland, again and again over two decades, a plucky plurality has challenged the political establishment and fought referendum campaigns against the odds on EU treaties. It's even won, in Nice the First. But the media are inclined to treat this phenomenon less like a story and more like a nuisance.

Now the plurality is at it again in France and, notwithstanding a tightening in recent polls, it stands a real chance of being an electoral majority in the referendum there – despite a political consensus nearly as stultifying as the one we've got here. So do our media relish this extraordinary David and Goliath battle at the very centre of Euro-consciousness? Au contraire.

In a trope reminiscent of the US administration's compliments for the brave "new Europe" politicians who joined the war in Iraq despite the opposition of their people, it's the French government that has been cast as the plucky, embattled underdog, fighting the good fight against, uh, the majority of the French people. In this version of democracy, the proper role of government is to give the people what's good for them, whether the people like it or not. The people's opposition is usually cast as something primal, atavistic, emotional.

In the case of the EU constitution, one hears a great deal about "latent nationalism" and the mob's ruthless desire to punish their pols for some obscure local slight. The EU, it's implied, is too important to be subject to such whimsical electoral contingencies.

Thus, in talking about France, the media's question becomes, "How will French leaders convince their people?" Rather than, "Why are the French people unconvinced, and why might we be too?" The fact that a significant minority of us are already and historically unconvinced is rarely alluded to.

The French case is all the more awkward because a clear political agenda drives most of the No campaign, and it's far from an atavistic, chauvinistic one. Starting with the French trade-union confederation's overwhelming, leadership-defying No vote in February, the campaign has been led by a left-wing critique of the neo-liberalism that rules the EU, and the constitution's (relatively minor) role in copper-fastening it. Mostly the media ignores this fact.

On last weekend's Saturday View programme on RTÉ Radio 1, after another ten minutes of "poor old French government, will they pull it out of the fire?" It was left to Joan Burton to make this simple point, briefly and weakly, referring to the now-controversial services directive and its potentially devastating impact on workers. Her brevity and weakness were hardly surprising, given that Labour's euro MP and european affairs spokesman, Proinsias de Rossa, has been labouring manfully for a decade-and-a-half to convince us that the "social Europe", a peaceable, left-wing counterweight to the US, was just around the corner.

The trick for Labour, as ever, is to tap into the wider left's discontent with the direction of the EU, without abandoning the party's deep investment in the constitution and other elements of the Euro-project. But as with its sister socialists in France, and despite the media's support, the party is likely to be outflanked on its left by more genuine opponents of "liberalisat-ion", EU-style.