At short notice I supplied the sub-committee with some notes, rather than a properly compiled document. I wanted to sketch the background for the sub-committee to some of the concerns about a lack of media coverage of the EU in Ireland. The situation is like this in other countries also. There is a contradiction. On the one hand, we have a European quarter in Brussels with one of the largest concentrations of journalists in the world, yet despite the size of this news corps, we do not get a huge amount of European news onto the agendas of the media here. There is a very limited presence of EU news, newspapers and broadcasting services. I speak of research we have done in DCU with other collaborators and groups of universities. We find there is a slight difference, sometimes significant, in media which are market driven in terms of the commercial pressures on them. They tend to carry less European news compared with media which have a public service ethos. That is not a very surprising finding.
The second point I would make is that there is also a very large concentration of lobbyists. I mention this because it comes up when we talk to civil society groups, especially in Brussels. Probably the world's largest concentration of lobbyists is in Brussels, bigger even than in Washington DC. This gives rise to concern about lack of transparency in terms of who is influencing whom in the Brussels environment. It is a new concern. When we talk about the so-called democratic deficit in the European Union, this must be seen as part of it. There are a number of groups trying to open it up a little to media scrutiny in order that we have a little more news about this.
I am dipping into what we know from media research. There is no doubt that there is a correlation between what appears on the agendas of the news media, whether items on the European Union are very high or very low, and where the Union comes on the agenda of public opinion. We can see this very easily. Many studies since the 1970s in various countries have shown this. If, for example, the European Union does not appear on the agendas of the news media or appears very low down, that tends to be reflected on the agenda of public opinion also.
There has been huge concern in the Commission about this for many years. That is why it has commissioned a great deal of research by people like ourselves to try to find out what is going on, why there is an inadequate news flow between Brussels and the member states. I want to mention one or two points about this. I will not be able to end up with some very happy, easy solutions to the problem. It is a big problem that has been known about for some time. However, it might help the sub-committee to see the background.
First, in Brussels — I am talking here about research that actually talks to a great number of journalists who work in Brussels — there is a strong feeling that the Commission tends to manage the news very tightly, that it generates a great deal of information which it hopes will become news, but it generates it in a unilateral way. This is a situation one does not find in Leinster House; it is not found in the national political systems of most countries. There is that little undertow of resentment in the corps of journalists working in the European Union about this and the feeling that perhaps the information flow is being managed or manipulated. Related to this is the feeling among many journalists that they do not have access to senior officials in the Commission who might be able to carry a little news value. Again, one can see comparisons in the national political system if people can never get the chance to speak to the Taoiseach or a Minister and are blocked from doing so. This tends to be a problem. We refer to it as the difference between on the record information coming to journalists and off the record information. On the record information is the regular, professional flow of huge amounts of information coming at journalists every day through the midday briefing and other such briefings. The problem is that not much of this will be translated into news. It is a huge flow of information but not everything becomes news on television, the radio or in the newspaper. In other words, the professionalisation of this news flow tends to act as something that is not very useful for generating news. Journalists will report that they prefer covering the Parliament, news from which is easier to get. They can tie particular events to Irish MEPs which helps to generate interest at home. Two of the key news values that drive the generation of news in every newsroom are how one can personalise a news story to have more than just technical and legal information and how one can burrow in and find conflict and disagreement between people. This drives the excitement and the buzz in Leinster House and why journalists can dig in here. It is not like that in Brussels.
On the larger issues of the European project, further integration, movement towards a constitution and expansion, many journalists have told our research teams that they are critics and reporters but not advocates. I refer to euroscepticism arising from British journalism having an impact on Irish journalism. This is not just on the streets, where one can see it in newspapers, but in the working environment in Brussels.
Moving from Brussels to the home newsroom, the problem is that journalists working in Brussels must convince the news editor on a daily basis that the stories are worthwhile. This can produce difficulties. We might refer to editors as gatekeepers. Many stories are suggested by journalists in Brussels but frequently the answer is no, that there is no space — no time if it is on radio or television — or that they have no relevance nationally. I refer to a number of quotes from Irish journalists. One says the rule of thumb is to refer to Ireland in the first two paragraphs. Journalists are working on stories every day and must get through the gatekeeper in RTE or D'Olier Street. That is not easy. Part of the difficulty lies with the editor in trying to think what will work with the audience — the reader, listener or viewer. Frequently, the feeling is that news about the European Union is not interesting and is left out. Another journalist described covering European developments as like watching paint dry. This is the attitude of journalists as they try to bargain with editors on the desk. The editor is fighting for market share and to drive up readership, circulation or audiences. That is the problem. In general, editors are unresponsive to calls from journalists to loosen up a little and accept more news stories from Brussels. There is, however, a lot of opposition to this. The exceptions are what we might call the elite newspapers, the Financial Times being typical. It has access to high level sources in Brussels at the level of the Commission. It gets the best leaks from the system, the best quality information and has a full European edition which is serving an elite of industrial and financial people in Brussels and other European countries.
On the question of whether there are solutions, all of the academic networks I have been with do not come up with solutions easily and quickly. The commercial media have their priorities as regards what the market, as they see it, will bear. News is an item they must sell; it has economic value. The Commission has decided on a localisation strategy because it is frustrated by the barrier presented in the national media. It has discussed plans to overcome this and get around the national gatekeepers with more local presentations, working with local and regional news outlets. This is the idea of Europe of the citizens, one of the tags coming from Brussels. Europe of the nations implies that we must speak to the nation through the national media. One must bear in mind the problems I have outlined. From the Commission's point of view, the idea behind Europe of the citizens is to try to overcome national barriers to get through to the citizens. There is not much excitement among journalists about solutions working in Europe. For instance, there is not a great deal of investigative journalism being carried out that is sexy and really draws in audiences. Many media in Ireland and in other countries do not have a regular European page or a European section, such as does the Financial Times. People in television complain that they cannot find an alternative to dull talking heads in Brussels or just pictures of statesmen getting in and out of big cars. It is very difficult to visualise Europe, as much of the information is technical and legalistic.
By way of background, the Commission has been involved since about 1989 with the so-called directive on television without frontiers but that has been aimed more at trying to make sure that the television systems across Europe will take in material coming from other European countries and it is not specifically about the Commission. The television channel Euronews is available in Ireland on cable systems but its viewership is not very high and many people will confess they just do not like watching it because it does not have a regular persona or a regular news anchor heading it up.
In terms of trying to regulate what the media do, I suppose the only sector of the media that might be open to this would be public service media in this country, RTE and TG4. However, we need to be very careful about requiring and regulating public service television and radio to spend more time on Europe. I spent some time working in RTE and I know the pressures coming from politicians who say we should have more coverage of national politics. However, broadcasters will say that in reality nobody will watch this kind of communication and certainly not during prime time hours.
