This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Ireland’s political parties have been urged by the National Union of Journalists to tackle the thorny issue of media ownership and control in the country.

The NUJ renewed a call for the establishment of a commission on the future of the media, arguing that cross-party co-operation should form part of the current negotiations on the formation of a new government.

Context is important here. Ireland’s reputedly richest man, Denis O’Brien, owns and/or controls companies that dominate the Irish media landscape.

He is the largest shareholder in Independent News & Media (INM), publisher of the two largest-selling titles, the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent, plus the Sunday World and Dublin Herald. It also has 50% of the Irish Daily Star and owns 14 regional titles across the state.

O’Brien’s other media company, Communicorp, owns Ireland’s two leading commercial radio talk stations: Newstalk and Today FM. In addition, it owns Dublin’s 98FM, SPIN 1038, TXFM and SPIN South West. There are extensive holdings across Europe as well.

According to Fintan O’Toole, writing in the Irish Times, O’Brien “has accumulated excessive private power” with “an impact on the public realm of democracy.”

Although there are two major rival news operations - the Irish Times and the broadcaster RTÉ - O’Brien’s media interests have a disproportionately dominating influence within the Irish Republic.

So the call for a commission, made by the NUJ’s Irish secretary, Séamus Dooley, is hardly a surprise. Indeed, as he told a journalism semionar at Limerick university on Thursday, the issue of media dominance in Ireland is hardly a new issue.

He reminded the audience that a former NUJ president, John Devine, had raised the problem with the Dublin government in the mid-1970s following the acquisition of Independent Newspapers by O’Brien’s ownership predecessor, Tony O’Reilly, in 1973.

The minister at the time, the late Justin Keating, was unmoved. He told Devine that no politician would willingly pick a fight with a newspaper owner, echoing the US dictum: “Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”

Dooley said the issue of ownership and control was “too frequently assumed to be about direct editorial interference by owners and shareholders in editorial content” which “ignores the reality that ownership shapes media content in a variety of ways.” He continued:

“Ownership is linked to financial control and determines the priority given to editorial budgets; it determines the business model; and it directly determines wages and terms and conditions of employment within the industry. Owners influence the shape of news in a variety of ways, including through editorial appointments and structures.”

He pointed out that the consequences of reduced editorial resources “are less coverage of public bodies, courts, parliamentary committees and local authorities.”

And, said Dooley, “slashed editorial budgets and shared editorial content between sister titles means less diversity, not just in opinions but in what is covered and how stories are covered.”



The NUJ believes all potential government partners (who are still arguing over the terms to form a government) should consider setting up a commission on the future of the media industry in order to avoid it becoming “a political football”.

More pertinently, Dooley argued that it would help to overcome the fear of a campaign by vested commercial interests against any political party that individually sought to address the issue of concentration of commercial control of the media.

Source: NUJ