Media and Politics

Rip Off Republic is causing quite a stir in the world of politics.

Which side are you on?
“Bertie declares open war on RTÉ”; “McDowell complains to RTE Authority” – every media outlet worth its salt should generate such headlines. One imagines that Village, to name but one, would kill for that kind of publicity.
Okay, the Government's rage is really confined to two shows, Prime Time and Rip-Off Republic, but that's two better than none. If an aggressive attitude to politicians and governments isn't quite the be-all and end-all of good journalism, it should arguably be a sine qua non.
Such an attitude is part of what has made the Star probably the best and most vital newspaper in Ireland in recent years (yes, faint praise) – and what makes it a bit sad that Star editor Ger Colleran won't be bringing this spirit to the Irish Independent as editor, after he lost out in the succession stakes there.
The marketplace is highly imperfect. Good, hard-hitting journalism isn't always as commercially successful as the Star. Lousy stuff often is. And on that side of the ledger, the Sunday Independent has again shown its purring subservience to power with an attack on investigative journalist Frank Connolly, in a lead story that sympathises with the Taoiseach's alleged “fears” about him. And not content with that kiss-up to political power, the story also offers copious space to insubstantial (and semi-literate) complaints against Connolly's Centre for Public Integrity from an aggrieved Trim hotel developer.

Incompetence symptoms
In general, even those outlets that are occasionally tough on public-sector power are prone to let the private sector off the hook. Rip-Off Republic was by no means a uniformly right-wing, anti-State screed. But its particular form of populism is likelier to target wasteful government spending, “over-regulation” and cosseted civil servants rather than, say, profiteering pension providers. That's hardly surprising: Eddie Hobbs approached his shows with evident integrity of intent, but also with the biases built up over years working in a sector that sees such profits as legitimate.
In our Hobbsian media world, the fault of governments is generally their “incompetence”, rather than their democracy-crushing relationships with other forms of social power. Thus it's now open season on the Bush administration after the gulf-coast fiasco, and as “failures” in Iraq make themselves all-too-evident. A better-run, “competent” imperialist slaughter would have been quite all right.
With this comes a tacit – or sometimes explicit – assumption that privatised public services would provide better. But are private firms really so blessed with efficiency and integrity? Those of us who have worked in them know better. Even Irish Ferries gets fairly smooth sailing through media waters, while Brendan Ogle is routinely scuppered. And the recent and belated attention to “builders” often ends up prompting personalised “cowboy” stories rather than challenging this most politically connected and deeply destructive of large industries.

Public-private partnership
Propaganda for the private sector often comes in the form of “business news” – especially, as it happens, on RTÉ. Perhaps journalistic life in a large “public service broadcaster” leads to a romantic view of the commercial world outside?
In late September, the Irish Times turned over 1,500 “opinion” words to Anglo-Irish Bank chairman Sean Fitzpatrick. His absurdly self-serving account of the celtic tiger was less interesting than his moans about business journalists who emphasise conflict and bad news. Perhaps Fitzpatrick is unfamiliar with the traditional definition of “news” as “something someone, somewhere, doesn't want you to know”. Certainly he's overstating the degree to which the press here adheres to the approach suggested by that definition.
 But he did single out RTÉ for special praise for generally resisting this nasty news-gathering impulse. RTÉ, Fitzpatrick wrote, “brings us morning and evening business coverage that is focused on just that – business”. What he meant, Meejit reckons, is that RTÉ projects an image of business than business people like to see – at the expense of actual news.