Ireland held its European and local elections on Friday. It is now Tuesday and the results are not completely finalised but the winners have been determined.
The coverage of the election by the traditional media was lacking, to say the least.
Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ) is a statutory body run by an authority appointed and funded by the Irish Government, occasionally attempting a stab at impartial coverage. Their costs are covered through a €158 licence fee and advertising. They pay astronomical salaries and the presenters often interview each other if other content does not present itself.
Ballot counting began on Saturday morning. RTÉ had reporters in each count centre. They had the equipment and the means to provide consistent and accurate updates. They had private balconies so the staff did not have to mix with the hoi polloi. In short, the national broadcaster had the means and the opportunity to provide excellent election coverage.
Instead, they did not report. Virtually no election-related information was released. There were plenty of matches shown and sporting results were discussed ad nauseum, but of elections, there was nary a soundbite. RTÉ focussed on the sporting fixtures rather than on one of the more important elections in the history of the state.
Indeed, citizens not particularly internet-savvy were quite at a loss until the Sunday papers came out. At that stage, the electoral landscape had already shifted. To be fair though, there were plenty of sensationalist headlines and dire predictions.
If it was not for a group of unpaid, dedicated bloggers, the Irish people might still be wondering who would represent them at both local and European level:
“…To put that in context; the core of Suzy, Alexia, Mark Coughlan and Cian (with some assistance from myself and Fergal) have, with no pay, no resources and no back office support just out-done the entire collected Irish press corps. While local radio, and local papers on Twitter provided superb in depth coverage of their local areas, only Newstalk, with George Hook’s rolling performance, seemed to be trying to go beyond their comfort zone for the benefit of a national audience.” [source]
Professional journalists wrote and filed story with information from the twitter feed (#le09) and liveblog of these volunteers. References and hat tips were not published.
It is rather strange that one one hand, news companies all over the world have been pondering their relevance in a instant information society. Yet on the other, there is little effort put into wooing the public with relevant information. While it is true that the more traditional media have been slow to catch up to modern technology, RTÉ does have a Twitter feed and all the reporters do possess mobile phones.
What this election has clarified, is that the interest of the media professionals is lacking. There was no innovative coverage or attempt to communicate, which is odd in a business whose sole function is communication.
A laissez faire attitude coupled with arrogant entitlement is killing the industry. Apparently, an onscreen scrolling horizontal banner is too much trouble. Even with reporters in every count centre, updates are now too difficult to send by text message.
I overheard the following snippet of conversation at one of the count centres, where the announcement of the results were delayed. An irate journalist from an independent radio station said, “RTÉ have scuppered it. It’ll be another five minutes… We’re waiting for the cue from RTÉ.”
A station with every resource (partly funded by public money) on hand could not be ready in time for the electoral announcement and delayed the entire proceedings. The RTÉ reporter was wandering around in a daze.
The bloggers provided the information, updates, video feeds, pictures as well as the rumours and speculations. Their coverage was the best source of information. However, as much as I appreciate the stellar work they did, it makes one a little uneasy that the national broadcaster failed so completely. Not being able to rely on the professionals is a bad sign indeed.
I wonder if the quote from my article could be put in inverted comments to clarify that it is seperate from the author’s contribution?
Oops! Sorry about that! It should be separate and that was a coding error. I’ll fix it momentarily.
Here’s a quote from my reply to Simon’s post
“We’re not ‘a few amateurs’. Just because we were not being paid by Irishelection.com at the weekend does not make us amateurs. Also note: being an online-only free-to-consume product doesn’t make the writers amateurs automatically.
Myself and Cian both work full-time for established media outlets at present (though I’ll be back to college in a few weeks) while Suzy has worked in the media in the past. ‘A few amateurs’ implies that our work is somehow lesser than An. Others”
We may not be a well-funded media outlet at the moment, but many of us are part of the group of ‘professionals’ that you say were, to paraphrase slightly, “lacking interest”. Some of us a are professionals – some of us are politicised professionals working outside the media – we’re all citizens, we’re just doing things a little differently.
RTÉ have other priorities to take into account. I’m sure people would have been complaining they didnt cover certain games, or gave blanket coverage to elections – if they had not covered the sport. Then again, who knows, informing the electorate etc etc, maybe you’re right.
Right. I wouldn’t expect blanket coverage of the election but an update along the button of the screen or during news bulletins is not too much to ask I feel.
Although I didn’t use the term amateurs, I take the point. But in this case unpaid bloggers means exactly that. I don’t think that bloggers is pejorative, although I can see how it could be interpreted. Apologies for not being clearer.
The coverage you all provided last weekend was peerless. You did that without financial and backend support which was most impressive. That volunteers can do so much with laptops and mobile phones really puts RTE’s lack of coverage in perspective.
Aye, fair comment so.
Media organisations are struggling at the moment as a whole. Online isn’t profitable really, so they aren’t investing in it. I think there is a small element of certain journalists being overly casual about how much appetite there is for coverage too, hopefully our work at the weekend showed a few orgs how it’s done and they get on the bandwagon. It can only be a positive thing.