Media Commentary: A journalistic duty to critically assess Election campaigns

The last election campaign exposed some critical inadequacies on the part of the media, which led to an unnsatisfactory campaign and a confused decision on the part of the electorate. Arguably, the . media's performance contributed to the situation in which the Coalition Government unexpecteddly found themselves in a position whereby they were unable to impleement their election promises - the issue which ultimately led to the dissoolu tion of the Dail on January 27.  By Vincent Browne

It is as well to state at the outset that Magill is included in this critique of the media's performance and this reporter as well.

The basic problem was that we failed to elicit from the politicians straight answers to the crucial issues facing the country' in June '81. Priimary amongst these was the state of the nation's finances. Many of us knew that the public finances were in a very much worse condition than Fianna Fail were alleging but throughout the campaign we entirely failed to estabblish this point. We were therefore responsible for the electorate not being told by Fianna Fail how and why they had got us into this terrible mess and how they proposed getting us out of it. Indeed the electorate was allowed to go to the polis without any clear idea of the mess we were in. There was a general failure to analyse Fianna Fail's record in office and to make its leaders accountable for what they had done in' Government.

There were similar failures in relaation to the Fine Gael and Labour prooposals. Although Fine Gael acknowwledged that there was a grave problem in the public finances they refusedto s-tate throughout that campaign what it was they were going to do about it. We at, no stage ever force a Garret FitzGerald or any of his frontbench spokespersons to say that they would either raise taxes or cut public expennditure to deal with that problem, let alone get them to say what taxes they would raise and what public expenditure they would cut. .

We also failed to expose the nonnsense that was at the heart of the Fine Gael programme, the commitment to reduce inflation by starting off to inncrease it. It was a preposterous prooposal, especially as the momentum towards indirect taxes was also going' to have to bear the burden of dealing with the budget deficit.

We ignored, for the most part, the other contradiction in the Fine Gael programme, the commitment to inncrease public expenditure without stating how it was going. to be paid for.

On the Labour side we failed to get them to say precisely how they would pay for their proposed massive food subsidies. But more importantly we failed to get from them clear committments on what they were not preepared to negotiate on with Fine Gael. The 'outcome of these failures were multi-fold: A deal was ultimately done between Fine Gael and Labour for which nobody had voted ~ certainly in most crucial respects the Labour voters had voted for the precise oppoosite.

Our failure to establish with Fine Gael what they were going to do about the budget deficit led to the situation whereby the electorate was later surrprised to find that the Government it had just chosen was imposing taxes on them for which they had not voted ~ the pretext that the situation was connsiderably worse than they had known was rubbish, everYOne who had even thought about it knew that ·if there was going to be a budget deficit of £800m. in 1981, if nothing was done about it there would be a budget deeficit of well over £1 ,200m. in 1982.

The electorate was also no doubt surprised to find that the attractive tax package it believed it had voted for could not be implemented', Again this should not have been a Surprise had the media done its job thoroughly.

All these failures meant that the June 1981 election was . essentially meaningless -. the electorate WaS voting for a chimera., either because the Fianna Fail recotd was not presennted to it or because the alternative offered was entirely unrealistic.

It is as well to reflect on these faillures right now. The responsibility for ensuring that this election is not anoother piece of codology rests largely with the media. lfwe don't force the politicians to face up to the real issues in this campaign and give straight answers to the questions that arise then nobody will.

The questions that now arise are the following:

* precisely how do each of the poliitical parties propose to deal with the budget deficit problem.

* we know what the Coalition's budget is, we need to know in detail what the Flanna Fail budget would be (this is a critical issue partly beecause Charles Haughey has made this the central issue of the campaign and if Fianna Fail is re-elected the elecctorate should know what is in store for it).

* we want to know what, if any pubblic expenditure cuts are proposed by either party or at least what public expenditure programmes will not be cut.

* we must find out what exactly the' monies that are being borrowed for capital investment are going to be used on, since most of the capitalfnvesttment that has been undertaken over the last several years has been wasteeful.

* we need to explore fully the record of the Coalition in office and make its members accountable for what they did over the 7 months. .

* we also need to explore what Fianna Fail did since 1977 and Partiicularly sincej, December 1979 when Charles Haughey took over - the issues raised in this edition of Magill in relation to the fiddling of the January 1981 budget and the abanndonment of all restraint in public setvicepay in 1980 needs to be exxplored and the members of that Government made fully accountable for what they did.

There are a number of other issues which need answers but which have always been ignored by us Irish jourrnalists. Primary amongst these is the issue of party political finances. It really isn't good enough that there is absolutely no enquiry in this country into how money is raised, who is paying into the coffers and what amounts, what explicit or implied undertakings this involves etc.

It would be useful if those journaalists interested in these issues were to get together and work out some kind of Joint effort to get answers to these questions - at present press conferrences are far too diffused and little real information comes from them. •