There was universal delight, and joy unconfined, in the media yesterday, amidst the release of the latest “trust in media” figures from Reuters. Irish people may have turned on the Church, their politicians, big business, and most institutions, but, as it turns out, we sure do love our journalists:
Irish people’s trust in media increases amid concern over fake news https://t.co/dYvYdLTxUN pic.twitter.com/RwdgTT2TH5
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) June 23, 2021
Chances are, of course, that if you are a Gript reader then you probably fall into either the 11% of the public who say that they do not trust RTE, or, if you are a moderate like me, you fall into the 10% who are not sure. Maybe you trust the weather forecast, or their sports coverage, or something.
In any case, there is no particular reason to suspect that the poll is wrong.
The results are not surprising. After all, when the media does make a horrendous mistake, like the Carlow School, who is going to tell the public? Because, as we’ve learned this week, it sure won’t be the media. And wider observation of Irish society would suggest a high level of acceptance of what the media says.
There is, and has been, after all, no evidence of widespread dissent in Ireland over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Protests opposing what one might term the media and Government narrative have been scarce, and, in the greater scheme of things, quite small. The political parties, Government and Opposition, who have supported the lockdown and the hyper-cautious approach advocated by most media outlets, have not seen their support reduce in the aggregate. The Irish people, taken as a collective, are pretty satisfied with the state of their country, and their media. The fact that they should not be is, at the end of the day, less a fact than an (indisputably correct) opinion.
And none of this should surprise. You are reading one of only two or three minor media outlets which have consistently given space to the opposing view. Irish people who rely on the media for their news will be entirely unaware, for example, that other parts of the world have fully open economies, and put an end to lockdown months ago. The only time the words “Texas” or “Florida” will be mentioned on the RTE news, if we’re honest, is if there happens to be a mass shooting in either state. RTE has managed to cover the European Championships without ever once remarking on the fact that at those games, massive crowds are in attendance, despite the dreaded variants. The media has consistently presented Ireland’s abnormality as the opposite, and highlighted only those international covid stories which might be seen to justify the Irish Government’s approach. So, if the virus surges somewhere, we’ll hear about it. When it abates to nothing in fully open countries, we are not told.
The other issue here, of course, is that the Irish media are an entirely self-policing entity. So, for example, when they do make a horrendous mistake – like the one, mentioned above, that they made last year in relation to Presentation College Carlow – they band together to make sure nobody finds out. No Irish radio station or newspaper has apologised for their role in that. No station or newspaper, either, has called upon their competitors, and fellow journalists, to apologise. On that story, as with almost every other media mistake, there is a genuine conspiracy of silence. After all, people trust the media, and telling people that the media collectively got it wrong might undermine that. Why should they do it, goes the thinking, when there is nothing to be gained from it?
And so, it is a circular problem. At Gript, we don’t have the resources, at present, to consistently break through to a wider audience. If you read us, it is because you probably actively sought us out. The same is true for almost all dissenting voices in Ireland: You won’t find them broadcast into your home. You have to actively seek them out.
The one comfort, of course, that those of us who despair at this state of affairs can take is this: In Ireland, over the past three decades since 1990, all of the great institutions, aside from the GAA and the media, have fallen. In general, the Irish public are more cynical, and less trusting today than they were thirty years ago. There is hope, you’d have to say, that at some point people will start to notice that Ireland is an outlier with regard to the rest of the world, and wonder why the media remained so silent, and did not do their jobs as watchdog for the rest of us. Perhaps that will come in the coming years, as the financial cost of lockdown bites, and the cutbacks and austerity begins. But it is only a hope.
For the moment, all those of us in the 10% or the 11% can do is sit here, grit our teeth, and bear it.