Following on from yesterday’s consideration of questionable news articles the State has paid for, I thought today a precise breakdown of which media organisations are receiving funding from Coimisiún na Meán, and how much, was in order.
National and regional news outlets are receiving, at the upper end, hundreds of thousands of euros from the State media regulator as part of its two funding schemes, the ‘local democracy reporting’ scheme and the ‘courts reporting’ scheme. A further scheme was added, the ‘news reporting’ scheme, and was announced last week alongside another €10 million round of funding.
However, to begin with the best-known national outlets, and incidentally topping the list of taxpayer funding recipients via Coimisiún na Méan (CnaM), is the Irish Independent and its assorted regional publications, which taken together was offered €337,714.
That all came under the ‘local democracy reporting’ scheme, which CnaM describes as ensuring “that local media contains quality reporting on public institutions and authorities, where issues of importance to citizens are considered”.
Aware of that, it should come as no surprise then that just a few short weeks after the funding was announced, Mediahuis, which owns the Irish Independent and a number of regional titles, announced the hiring of 17 new journalists for those publications. A number of those regional titles, as well as Mediahuis directly, received tens of thousands of euros worth of funding each, too.
Continuing with the national titles, following the Irish Independent is The Journal, which was offered a total of €130,566, also under the local democracy reporting scheme. This was followed closely by the Irish Examiner, which was offered just over €1,000 less – €129,042. That involved offers under both the local democracy scheme (€15,226) and the courts reporting scheme (€113,816). The Herald brought up the rear, receiving a total of €117,958, composed of €105,720 under the local democracy scheme and €12,238 under the courts scheme.
The courts scheme, again according to CnaM, is there to “support and enhance the vital role of media service providers in reporting by skilled journalists on court proceedings at a local and regional level”.
That’s it as far as the national titles go, with neither The Irish Times, nor any of the Irish Daily-s, nor the Sun appearing on the list, to be fair to each of them – in relation to this matter, anyway. However, a number of regional titles outearned their national counterparts, with the Westmeath Examiner (€257,852) and the Connacht Tribune (€218,902) topping the list after the Irish Independent. Each received offers of over €100k worth of funding, under both schemes.
In order then from highest to lowest funding offers to regional newspapers, are:
The last title included, the Connaught Telegraph, is somewhat misleading, as that’s also named in a partnership project funding offer, alongside the Western People, for a total of €241,741. However, how much each partner receives out of that is unclear, so it can’t be divided between them from an observer’s perspective, simply noted.
Another two sets of partnership project funding offers are included, one between Courts News Ireland and Mediahuis (€56,638) and another between freelance journalist David Forsythe and The Examiner (€51,000). Another freelance journalist to be made an offer was Anne Lucey, who was offered €19,000 by CnaM.
A number of digital-only publications, and some non-traditional at that (on Substack), were also made funding offers. Courts News Ireland, aside from its partnership project funding, was offered €113,618, predictably under the court reporting scheme.
Dublin Live and Cork Beo were offered €40,000 and €33,000 respectively, while “reader-supported local journalism publication about Cork city and county,” on substack ‘Tripe + Drisheen’ was offered €38,000. Online, Irish-language news platform Tuairisc.ie was meanwhile offered €32,310.
That’s the full list of recipients of the first round of funding under those two schemes, the most interesting takeaway, other than who’s receiving State funding, being the amount going to Mediahuis-related publications.
The Irish Independent; The Herald; The Kerryman; Wicklow People; Wexford People; The Argus; The Sligo Champion; The Drogheda Independent; and The Corkman between them were offered €1,093,974 – which, as anyone working in journalism or publishing would tell you, goes an awfully long way. And that’s leaving aside however much Mediahuis gets from its partnership project with Courts News Ireland (worth €56,638, you’ll recall).
It’s important that the public knows who’s in receipt of State funds, and while this information is publicly available, it’s hardly been discussed. This is no surprise, given it was slipped into the successful applicants document at some unknown point after it had been released (I had a look at the document when first it was released and didn’t see figures, just recipients) and given the recipients were hardly going to publicise it.
That’s what Gript is for.