THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF THE IRISH PRESS

THE GROWING INFLUENCE OF BRITISH NEWSPAPERS IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND SINCE 1995

JEAN MERCEREAUEscola Superior de Educação Jean Piaget/Nordeste,

Portugal

Last year, about one third of the daily morning newspapers sold in the Republic of Ireland

were British1. This proportion has risen significantly since the mid-1990s but it is by no means

exceptional, since it was more or less the same in the 1920s, following the foundation of the Irish

Free State (Farrell 1984:18). Indeed, powerful British media groups have always found in Ireland

a natural extension of their market, encouraged by a growing cultural proximity and a common

language. This phenomenon is therefore not recent, but it has taken new proportions since British

tabloids began to see their circulation and advertising revenues stagnate, or even fall, during the

1990s in the United Kingdom2. Ireland is no longer a comparatively cheap way of adding a few

thousand copies to the total circulation but has become an objective in itself where Irish editions

of British titles are expected to make money of their own not only by high sales but also by

increasing their shares of the advertising market. Since the death of the Irish Press Group in

1995, for example, the total circulation of British newspapers in Ireland has increased by almost

1

60%, against less than 20 for their four Irish rivals3. In particular, News Corporation, Associated

Newspapers and Trinity Mirror, among others, are now bringing important changes to the press

of the Republic of Ireland. After presenting the current situation and the main changes which

have taken place recently, this paper will try to understand how such press groups may transform

the traditional landscape of the Irish press.

Before going any further in this analysis of the British papers in Ireland, one essential

question must be raised: basically, what makes a newspaper Irish or foreign? The answer is

probably not as obvious as it may seem. The Joint National Readership Research, for example,

the Irish equivalent of the British ABC, includes the Star, which is 50% British owned, as well as

Ireland on Sunday, property of a British group for several years, among Irish titles. What, then,

may be the criteria? In 1996, the Commission on the Newspaper Industry gave some light to this

debate, by stating the conditions for a newspaper to be considered Irish. According to the

Commission, it must direct its content to the Irish market, be published on Irish territory, be

controlled by Irish interests, have a majority of its staff resident in Ireland and be printed and

distributed by persons working in Ireland (Horgan 2001:160). The problem is clearly that most

of these conditions may apply to a growing number of British titles for sale in Ireland, which

makes any classification inevitably subjective. In want of a better definition, however, I will

stick to these criteria, and consider as Irish newspapers the following titles: The Irish

Independent, Irish Times, Star and Examiner as morning dailies, two evening papers, the

Evening Herald and Evening Echo and, on Sundays, the Sunday Independent, Sunday World,

Sunday Tribune, Sunday Business Post and Ireland on Sunday4.

2

Of the nine British daily newspapers available in the Republic of Ireland, the Sun, or Irish

Sun, is the one to have known the most spectacular evolution in the past decade. Its average

circulation, from around 30.000 in the early 1990s, is now about to overtake the Irish Times as

the second best-selling newspaper of the country, with almost 120.000 copies sold on average

last year. By itself, the Sun makes up for more than half of the British titles sold in Ireland. The

position of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation group is even stronger on the overcrowded

market of Sunday newspapers, where News of the World and the Sunday Times represent

between them about two thirds of the total of British titles sold5. The Irish Mirror also holds a

strong position with almost 80.000 copies sold daily last year, a growth of some 30% since 1995.

Beside these two eternal rivals, News Corporation and Trinity Mirror, we can’t minimize

the dramatic increase in the sales of Ireland on Sunday since Associated Newspapers bought it

from Scottish Radio Holdings in September 2001 for 12 million Euros. Thanks to a very

dynamic launching campaign, the owners of the Daily Mail have tripled the sales of their new

title, whose circulation now reaches 160.000. This tremendous success is expected to lead,

sooner or later, to the foundation of an Irish Daily Mail which could allow the owners of

Associated Newspapers to reproduce in Ireland, on a daily basis, the formula of so-called middle

market journalism so successful in Britain lately6.

1 British titles represented 33,3% of the daily morning newspapers sold in the Republic of Ireland in 2002 (227.755 out of 684.402), against 26.8% in 1995. 2 This is relative, of course, since both the Sun and Daily Mirror still enjoy a circulation which would make any editor in any other European country envious. Despite a recent decline in their sales in Great Britain their circulation for March 2003 were respectively of 3.521.548 and 1.997.846 according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.3 Total circulation of British papers in Ireland: 143.000 in 1995, 228.000 in 2002. Total circulation of Irish papers: 385.000 in 1995, 459.000 in 2002. 4 The Dublin Daily, which was launched in March this year and whose main shareholder is the British group Archant, based in Norwich, is not taken into account here. 5 In 2002, with an average circulation of 116.000 (against 56.000 in 1995), the Irish Sun represented 51% of all the British sales in Ireland. On Sundays, News of the World and the Sunday Times made up, between them, for 65,6% of the total of British papers sold. 6 Unlike its more sensationalist rivals, the Daily Mail has considerably improved its circulation since the mid-1990s: from 1,7 to 2,4 million between 1994 and 2002 (+41%).

3

Beyond the three giants mentioned so far, the Express Group has also often hit the news

recently. Co-owner, with Independent News and Media, of the Star, Ireland’s only daily tabloid

founded in 1988, the Express Group was in 2000 bought by Richard Desmond, whose nickname

of «king of porn» says a lot about his journalistic principles. On the basis of a recipe which has

so far proved successful on the British market – low prices, high profitability and sensationalist

news – Desmond has given a new vitality to the Star. At the same time, the operation was a hard

blow for the chairman of Independent News and Media Tony O’Reilly. Usually considered one

of the richest men in Ireland, O’Reilly, who was getting ready to be knighted by Queen

Elizabeth, suddenly found himself associated with the owner of titles as explicit as Asian Babes,

Big Ones or Nude Readers’ Wives. This embarrassing partnership was for some time the target of

sarcastic remarks on the part of the few papers still avoiding O’Reilly’s control, especially the

Irish Times and the Sunday Business Post.

Independent News and Media, however, is probably the only Irish publication able to

compete with its powerful British rivals. Occasionally, it has even come to defy them on their

own grounds, like when it bought the agonizing London Independent in 1997 or, more recently,

the Belfast Telegraph in a polemical operation7. Within the Irish market, O’Reilly seems to rely

on an increasingly dominant position since he controls, directly or indirectly, two thirds of the

Irish newspapers sold every day, and over three quarters of them on Sundays8. However, as John

Horgan has pointed out in an essay called Newspaper Ownership in Ireland and its Effects on

Media Diversity, the Independent group, as wealthy as it is, is still “a relatively small fish in the

ocean in which Murdoch and other media giants swim” (Cassidy & McGrady 2001:51). Besides,

7 In July 2000, Independent News & Media bought the Belfast Telegraph, Northern Ireland’s best-selling newspaper (average circulation: around 110.000) for 300 million pounds. Despite objections on the unionist side, the operation was finally approved by the authorities. 8 Among daily newspapers, Independent News & Media owns the Irish Independent, the Evening Herald and half of the Star. On Sundays, it owns the Sunday Independent and the Sunday World and controls the Sunday Tribune.

4

O’Reilly’s leading titles, especially the Sunday Independent and Sunday World, are under

growing pressure from their British rivals which are clearly aiming their campaign at them. A

good example could be found in a full page advertisement by Ireland on Sunday in February this

year, which read, in huge characters: “165 000 readers: read it and weep, Tony”9. This is only

one episode in a war which has opposed Independent News and Media and Associated

Newspapers for some time. Interestingly enough, this advertisement was published in the

Independent’s archrival the Irish Times, which considers itself outside this war because of its

status of Ireland’s newspaper of record.

Indeed, the Irish Times has always made a point of staying aloof from the battle between

the Independent and the British titles. Well before its recent financial problems, the Irish Times

has always refused to acquire more titles and has boasted of its original, independent structure.

Last November, a speech by Conor Brady, the leaving editor, to his staff, illustrated how the

Irish Times likes to think of itself as “a newspaper that controls its own destiny, that stands for

honest, principled journalism, that isn’t in anybody’s pockets and that pays its own way”10. As

Brady himself pointed out, this is indeed a rare thing in the world of communication of the XXIst

century. In the end, the only exception has come from the usually discreet Examiner, of Cork,

whose owner Thomas Crosbie Holdings bought the Sunday Business Post from Trinity Mirror

for 10 million Euros last year. Mary Harney, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment

welcomed the operation at the time, considering that it should improve competition in the

national media market11. This would probably be true if media competition in the Republic did

not depend more and more heavily on British groups.

9 Full page advertisement in the Irish Times, 28 February 2003. 10 “Departing editor speaks of paper’s duty to readers”, The Irish Times, 12 October 2002. 11 The Sunday Business Post, 11 June 2002.

5

When de Valera launched the Irish Press in September 1931, the first editorial of the new

paper claimed that its intention was “to be the voice of the people, to speak for them, to give

utterance to their ideals and to defend them against slander and false witness”12. According to the

nationalist leader, British publications represented a threat to Ireland on four levels: economics,

politics, culture and nationality, this last one obviously including language and religion. Stephen

Brown, in his history of the press in Ireland first published in 1937, reflected this view:

The British press constitutes a perpetual menace to Ireland owing to its wide diffusion in this country. […] The British newspapers are also a cultural menace diffusing, as they do, a culture that is not merely alien but growing ever more pagan. Religion, morals and Irish nationality are threatened likewise by this invasion. (Brown 1937:173).

Times have changed, however, and it is today mainly on economic and journalistic grounds that

British newspapers in Ireland are criticized.

In 1995, in a book called Ireland Today, Anatomy of a Changing State, Gemma Hussey

still claimed that “Irish newspapers, reflecting the ethos and the character of the country, are not

guilty of the worst sexual and sleazy excesses of the British tabloids” (Hussey 1995:339). The

same year, Aileen & Kathleen O’Meara, in their book Headlines or Deadlines, considered that

“Unlike England, the Irish newspaper market is not dominated by the tabloid style, which goes

after personality rather than news, using populist angles” (K. &. O’Meara 1995:4). These

statements may have had some justification at the time, but if British papers did show the way

towards sensationalism to their Irish colleagues, the least we can say is that some of them did not

offer much resistance before joining them in the gutter13. It is true, of course, that all the British

12 Editorial of the Irish Press, 5 September 1931. 13 “It is customary among journalists - mindful of the watchfulness of their employers – to pretend that talk of the declining media standards is exaggerated. But it is not possible to exaggerate. [...] This is not simply an issue of tabloid excess, but extends to every branch of the national media, including […] the self-styled “quality!” newspapers. [...] Not only do the supposed “quality” newspapers not object to this debasement of their industry and our profession, but most are now itching to get down in the gutter with the worst of them. Usually, all it takes is the concoction of some spurious «public interest dimension» to justify going where they would or could not go before” . John Waters, “Decline in media standards cannot be exaggerated”, The Irish Times, 1 June 1999.

6

papers with any significant circulation in Ireland are, at best, middle market, and that the so-

called quality press represents just over 8% of the total of British sales14. But a glance at the Star,

the Evening Herald, the Sunday World, the Irish Independent or even the Irish Times doesn’t

leave much doubt that the tendency is at a general “tabloidation” (Villate-Compton 1999:145) of

the press to which Irish newspapers do not show any particular intention of being an exception.

(To quote another neologism, I have seen recently some observers use the term

“murdochisation”.) To make matters worse, the limited size of a market, in this case Ireland,

leads newspapers, including the self-styled quality ones, to extend their appeal to a wider range

of audience15.

In terms of contents, it is important to insist on the fact that the British titles with the

highest circulation in Ireland are the ones that have increased their Irish contents, especially the

titles belonging to Murdoch. On the one hand, the Sun and News of the World have dedicated a

growing portion of their pages to Irish news while maintaining their traditional characteristics

based on sports, scandals and sex. (The same could be said, of course, of the Irish Mirror). On

the other hand, the Sunday Times has not only extended its Irish content but is now obviously

targeting the recruitment and property advertising market, with the launch of a new Ireland only

business section last year16. Besides, all three Murdoch-owned titles have their own editor for

Ireland – although sometimes based in London – and have recently opened their own commercial

14 The combined sales of the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Times, Guardian and Independent were 18.746 in 2002, out of a total of 227.755. 15 Opinion expressed by Fintan O’Toole in an interview with the author in March 2001: “The Irish market is so small: if El Pais or Le Monde sold the same proportion of the market as The Irish Times, they would be huge newspapers. Precisely because of this limited market, it does have to be a more populist newspaper. It is a difficult trick. If you publish an Irish version of Le Monde, or of El Pais, you would sell very few copies. This is why The Irish Times has to be a kind of middle market newspaper in English or German terms. There is no easy way out of that, it has to do with the size of the market. You’re never going to solve that problem by increasing the size of the market”.16 In order to attract advertisers, a full-page advert in this supplement is much cheaper than in any of its Irish competitors (17.000 Euros against 25.000 for the Irish Times, for example, with approximately the same number of copies sold).

7

office in Dublin. News Corporation also inaugurated last year a press center in Kells, Co. Meath,

strategically situated half way between Dublin and Belfast. This new printing plant, which cost

some 70 million pounds, can print 250.000 copies on weekdays and almost half a million on

Sundays (Horgan 2001: 173). Although a mere drop of water in the whole of the News

Corporation group, these investments show Rupert Murdoch’s ambition to consolidate his strong

position on the Irish market.

For many years, the British papers for sale in the Republic were identical to their British

editions and consequently gave little importance to Irish politics. This, too, has changed recently.

Once again, the best example of this recent interest in Irish politics came from two of Murdoch’s

titles, News of the World and the Sunday Times, which gave their support to the Fianna Fáil of

Bertie Ahern before the general elections of 1997 and 2002. Considering the ability of Murdoch-

owned papers to make or break politicians and governments in Britain in the past decades, this

says a lot about the integration of these newspapers in Irish society. In particular, it helps to

understand why big media tycoons are traditionally cherished by the rulers. (We could give the

examples of Tony Blair visiting Murdoch in Australia in 1998 or of Queen Elizabeth herself

knighting Tony O’Reilly three years later.) Even the Catholic Church doesn’t seem indifferent to

Murdoch’s charm, and made him a Knight Commander of Saint Gregory a few years ago17.

Ireland is no exception to this rule, and the Taoiseach made the inauguration of News

Corporation’s print centre one of his first public acts after his comfortable re-election in June last

year. On that occasion, Bertie Ahern even took the opportunity to qualify Murdoch as “one of the

world’s foremost leaders in media who has been held as one of the most outstanding Australian

figures in modern times”18. It is of course difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate the influence of

17 Jean-Claude Sergeant, “Rupert Murdoch, empereur des médias”, Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1999 and Fintan O’Toole, “Misdirected honour for the knight of the gutter”, The Irish Times, 16 January 1998. 18 Paul Cullen, “Shark who likes football get Bertie’s good press”, The Irish Times, 12 July 2002.

8

this support on the outcome of the election. But is nonetheless interesting to note that both

O’Reilly and Murdoch supported Bertie Ahern, for essentially commercial reasons, and took

opposed stances on the Gulf War earlier this year, with the papers owned by the Australian

magnate following their usual gung-ho line while the Independent titles took a firm stance

against the war.

On a more economic level, British tabloids have reproduced in Ireland the price war which

is their daily routine in Britain, and have done so with means which are completely out of reach

of any of their Irish rivals, including the Irish Independent. Indeed, which of these could cut its

price by some 40% overnight, as both the Sun and the Mirror did in May last year19? This

strategy has an instant cost, of course, estimated at around one and a half million Euros a week

for each title20, but since its objective is first of all to crush the competition, it is probably worth

it (Curran & Seaton 1991:117). This practice has often been criticized by Irish publishers in

general, and by Independent News and Media in particular, on the grounds that below cost sales

are forbidden by law. National Newspapers of Ireland, for example, explains on its website that

“backed by enormous economies of scale, certain British publishers can afford to sell their

newspapers in Ireland at a cover price which no Irish newspaper company can possibly compete

with” (http://www.nni.ie/press/htm). These claims, however, have so far never led to any

sanction by the authorities which have made it clear, since the death of the Irish Press Group in

1995, that they saw the industry of the press as any other business and therefore ruled by current

commercial legislation – they have always refused, for example, to abolish, or at least reduce,

VAT on newspapers which, at 12.5%, is the highest of the European Union. Paradoxically,

Independent titles are the ones to suffer most from this war, their characteristics making them the 19 In May 2002, the Irish Mirror cut down its price from 70 to 50 cents, immediately followed by the Irish Sun. A few weeks later, both the Irish Independent and the Irish Times rose their prices by 10%, to 1.40 Euros. 20 Catherine O’Mahony, “British tabloid price spreads here”, The Sunday Business Post, 19 May 2002 and “Tabloid all claiming victory in cut-price circulation battle”, The Sunday Business Post, 9 June 2002.

9

logical preys of the British tycoons. The Irish Independent, in particular, finds itself in a delicate

position, having to compete with the Irish Times at the quality end of the market and the British

exports at the other end21. At the same time, confident in their readers’ loyalty, O’Reilly’s titles

have been pushing up their cover prices to make second buys, mostly British, shrink

significantly.

His position as the main opponent of British titles on Irish soil has led O’Reilly to present

his battle as a crusade against the common national enemy. When faced with the accusation of

representing a threat to the diversity of the national press, he plays the defense of Irish interests.

Although his position is increasingly seen as a monopoly (Cassidy & McGrady 2001: 48-52), the

Irish tycoon’s view is that anything is better than falling into the hands of a foreign – meaning

British – group. He has had the opportunity to put this theory into practice at least twice in the

past, first with the agonizing Irish Press and then with the Sunday Tribune, preferring each time

to waste his own money rather than allow a British group to acquire an already-made Irish title

and consequently to threaten his privileges (O’Brien 2001: 216-218). The position of the

Independent Group has sometimes found an official echo, for example in the Commission on the

Newspaper Industry, nominated after the polemic around the death of the Irish Press in 1995 and

which declared in its report that

there are good grounds for believing that the ownership by Independent Newspapers of the Sunday World and its half share interest in the Star has had a marked effect on curtailing the imported dominance of the tabloid market in Sunday and daily papers in Ireland (Cassidy & McGrady 2001: 48).

21 To quote Conor Brady, editor of the Irish Times until October 2002, in an interview with the author in December 2000: “The Irish Independent has a very difficult task: they have to compete with us, at the quality end of the market; they have to compete with The Examiner for the middle market in rural Ireland; then, they have to compete with the British exports such as The Mail, The Sun or The Express. This means that they have to look in several directions at the same time”.

10

This view of things, however, raises a fundamental question: is depending on a big Irish

multinational intrinsically and systematically better than belonging to a big British

multinational?

In a collection of essays called Media in Ireland: the Search for Diversity and published in

1997, Damien Kiberd gave his opinion on the question:

Concentration of ownership can, in certain circumstances, lead to a reduction in the diversity of views finding expression in the media. It can also reduce the range of employment options available to journalists and editors, and can promote a climate of self-censorship (Kiberd 1997:8).

According to this definition, any risk of monopoly, be it indigenous or foreign, is intrinsically

dangerous, since plurality of titles and diversity of ownership are two completely distinct things.

In 1996, the Commission on the Newspaper Industry came to a similar conclusion: “The

Commission would be concerned that any further reduction of titles or increase in concentration

of ownership in the indigenous industry could severely curtail the diversity requisite to maintain

a vigorous democracy” (Horgan 2001:162). What can we say, then, of an Irish market where two

groups, O’Reilly’s Independent and Murdoch’s News International, control almost 60 % of all

the papers sold every day, and a record 78 % on Sundays22? And where, with the notable

exceptions of the Irish Times and the Examiner, all the national newspapers belong to a powerful

international group? Concentrated on a potential foreign threat, Irish nationalists have for many

years closed their eyes to the danger represented by a national monopoly, therefore failing to see

that concentration of the media could be a problem much worse than their nationality.

To conclude, let me remind that the growing importance of British media groups in Ireland

is not limited to News Corporation, Associated Newspapers or Trinity Mirror. Recently, other

22 Between them, O’Reilly and Murdoch controlled in 2002 400.000 daily papers out of 684.000 and 955.000 out of 1.229.000 on Sundays.

11

groups such as Scottish Radio Holdings or Dumferline Press have invested in regional and local

publications23. It is not restricted to the press either, as Murdoch – again – clearly showed last

year when BskyB, which he owns, bought the exclusive rights to Ireland’s home games in the

Euro 2004 qualifiers24. On the whole, indeed, Irish tabloid culture has come to share a lot with its

British model. To quote an article from the New Statesman from earlier this year, “where once

British newspapers replaced sex and scandal in their Irish editions with stories of miracles at

Lourdes, tabloid culture in Ireland is now pretty much the same as in Britain” 25. Irish newspapers

themselves seem aware of this situation, as an Irish Times article sadly expressed in December

last year:

The big picture […] is not just that the sex industry is generating sufficient profits to redraw the culture of publishers. Clearly, that says much about contemporary culture. But what’s more disquieting and, ultimately, of far greater significance is that, to big international media outfits, Ireland, like the rest of the world, is merely a market to be serviced and exploited. Technology, globalisation and economics have ensured that native media in small economies are under pressure26.

A bitter disappointment, indeed, but the Irish situation is by no means unique: countries like

Austria, Luxemburg, Belgium or even Scotland are all victims of the same phenomenon. In such

proportions, this phenomenon raises a vital question: what kind of redefinition will the old notion

of national press need in the future?

23 In December 2002, for example, the Meath Chronicle – with its printing press – was bought by the Scottish group Dumferline Press for 30 million Euros. Another group, Scottish Radio Holdings, owns several local Irish titles: the Tipperary Star, Leitrim Observer, Longford Leader, Munster Advertiser and Limerick People.24 Local radio stations have not escaped from this phenomenon either. Last year, for example, Midlands Radio 3 was bought by Ray Trindle, who already owns many local and regional radio stations on the British market. 25 Maurice Walsh, “What if Ireland was still British?”, The New Statesman, 27 January 2003.

12

NOTES

26 Eddie Holt, “Who’s watching the media”, The Irish Times, 2 December 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BROWN, Stephen (1937) (1971) The Press in Ireland: a Survey and a Guide, New York: Lemma Publishing Corporation.CASSIDY, Eoin & McGRADY, Andrew (ed) (2001), Media and the Marketplace: Ethical Perspectives, Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.CURRAN, James & SEATON, Jane (1991), Power without Responsibility: the Press and Broadcasting in Britain, London: Routledge.FARRELL, Brian (ed) (1984), Communications and Community in Ireland, Dublin & Cork: Mercier Press.HORGAN, John (2001), Irish Media since 1922: a Critical History, London: Routledge. HUSSEY, Gemma (1995), Ireland Today, Anatomy of a Changing State, London: Penguin.KENNY, Mary, J. & O’CONNOR (1997), Barbara (ed), Media Audiences in Ireland, Dublin: University College of Dublin Press. KIBERD, Damien (ed) (1997), Media in Ireland: the Search for Diversity, Dublin: Open air.KIBERD, Damien (ed) (1999), Media in Ireland: the Search for Ethical Journalism, Dublin: Open air.O’BRIEN, Mark (2001), De Valera, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press: Truth in the News?, Dublin: Irish Academic Press. O’MEARA, Aileen & Kathleen (1995), Headlines and Deadlines, Dublin: Blackwater Press.SEYMOUR-URE, Colin (1991), The British Press and Broadcasting since 1945, Oxford: Blackwell.VILLATE-COMPTON, Pascale (1999), “La Mutation des journaux de qualité”, in Lemonnier, Bertrand et al., Médias et culture de masse en Grande-Bretagne depuis 1945, Paris: Armand Colin.

13