Trivial press coverage 'damaging democracy'

Only 11 per cent of newspaper coverage of last year's elections dealt with the issues – the rest was about the candidates' personalities and their battles. The balance has become more uneven with every election – and it's bad for democracy, according to a new report. By Hilary Curley

Irish newspaper coverage of the 2004 European and local elections trivialised the political process and damaged democracy, according to a TASC report due to be published soon.

Newspapers failed to inform the public about the issues in the elections, focusing instead on personalities and inter-party conflicts. These were among the findings of research conducted by TASC, the think-tank on social change.

The findings are consistent with other research undertaken on coverage of elections since the 1970s. It is now accepted that coverage of the main policy issues in election campaigns is decreasing while the focus on the election as a game or a contest is on the increase with personalities as the central characters.

In the period prior to the 1973 general election, almost 60 per cent of print-media coverage was devoted to policy issues. In the 1987 election, the percentage fell to 54 per cent and the downward spiral has continued ever since. Analysis of the newspaper coverage of the 2002 General Election shows that only 45 per cent of all articles were devoted to policy issues.

The figures for the 2004 elections produced by TASC show that just over 11 per cent of print articles had a European, national or local policy issue as their primary topic. "Only six per cent of articles were written solely about a European policy issue," says Paula Clancy, Director of TASC. "While accepting that the European elections are not deemed as important as national elections, the figure of six per cent demonstrates that the media coverage was extremely problematic."

TASC conducted the research based on newspaper articles from three daily newspapers: The Irish Times, the Irish Independent and the Examiner along with three Sunday broadsheets, the Sunday Independent, the Sunday Tribune and Sunday Business Post and one tabloid, the Sunday World. It examined newspaper articles from 23 May up to and including 11 June which was election day.

It found that while coverage of the election was extensive in these newspapers, it looked primarily at personal lives, personalities and candidate rivalry.

Commentary was also broadly similar in character across the dailies. Almost two out of every five Irish Times articles dealt with a policy issue but only eight per cent of these provided any in-depth coverage. The Irish Independent articles did not cover policy issues as extensively and almost never provided any in-depth analysis. Finally, the Examiner provided the least coverage on issues of policy.

The findings on the Sunday newspapers is equally critical. "Astoundingly, the Sunday papers virtually ignored European political issues in the their coverage of the European election campaign. Of the Sunday papers, the closest discussion of serious policy concerns could be found in the Sunday Business Post, with the focus on pro-business issues," the report states.

The TASC research also examined the performance of the political parties in communicating the key policy messages to the public by analysing 156 press releases. Even though politicians were ridiculed extensively in the media, the report concludes that almost 65 per cent of the material in the press releases were concerned with policy issues relating to European, national or local politics. "On the whole, compared with the performance of the media, the political parties and candidates made a much more creditable effort to address issues," it states.

The power of the media is a constant topic of debate. While the report does not suggest that the media can be held responsible for voting patterns, it does argue that the media has a responsibility to circulate and disseminate information. Politicians are spending more and more time in trying to engage with the media to shape the message and its delivery.

If the trend towards coverage of personalities and personal lives rather than policies and issues continues, then the question of how the voter informs him or herself about political choices becomes more pertinent. The gradual erosion of informed choice, TASC argues, damages the democratic process and ultimately limits the capacity of the public to fully participate in determining the decisions that affect their everyday lives.

"Members of the media will argue that readers are not interested in the policy issues and they buy papers that write about things they are interested in" said Paula Clancy. "But we in TASC would argue that the media needs to challenge its own role in the democratic process. Does a newspaper take its role of public educator seriously? It is a question of balance and quality. If only 11 per cent of the coverage deals with policy, where is the balance in this?"

The research raises a number of other interesting aspects of election coverage by the print media. It draws attention to the way in which news is reported on by individual journalists, claiming that this cannot be divorced from the commercial and political considerations of the editor and the newspaper owners.

In the world of career advancement, "journalists have good reasons to write the stories which they know will be welcomed by their editors", the report says. This is of particular concern in Ireland where Independent Newspapers PLC is the dominant player in the Irish newspaper industry. 80 per cent of Irish newspapers sold in Ireland in 2001 were sold by companies which are fully or partially owned by this company.

The report concludes with some harsh criticisms of the newspaper industry. "This election was one in which the press treated candidates almost entirely as personalities, usually portrayed as sporting protagonists – with some leaning to satire and treatment of individuals as buffoons or at least as objectives of amusement".