A NATION OF IMITATORS?

Models and characteristics of the daily press of the Republic of Ireland

JEAN MERCEREAUEscola Superior de Educação Jean Piaget/Nordeste,

Portugal

For many years, the daily press of the Republic of Ireland suffered from the

comparison with its glorious British counterpart. Since the mid-nineteenth century,

however, Ireland has enjoyed an independent, relatively healthy and dynamic national

press, and all the major Irish newspaper groups today have their origins well before the

country’s political independence in 19221.

Last year, an impressive total of 800,000 newspapers were sold in the Republic of

Ireland every day, corresponding to an average of almost 200 for 1,000 inhabitants, far

behind countries where people are traditionally great newspaper readers such as Norway,

Sweden, Germany or even, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, but a long way ahead

of others like Portugal, Spain or Greece where the daily press has very low circulation

figures [Junqua 62]. Indeed, in that respect, Ireland seems to reproduce one more of those

paradoxes which have marked her troubled history, by being geographically located in

the Northern part of Europe, but with the same strong Catholic tradition as Southern

European countries. As far as its daily press is concerned, as in other fields, Ireland

shows some characteristics directly inherited from her original British model, which does

not necessarily mean that the Irish press should deserve to be considered a pale copy of it.

Beyond the series of clichés to which Ireland is often reduced, the objective of this

paper is precisely to present the state of the daily press of the Republic of Ireland today

and to determine to what extent it differs from other established models, especially

British, or if it may be considered a “Nation of imitators”, to quote an expression used by

Douglas Hyde in his famous speech entitled “The Necessity for de-anglicizing Ireland”

1 The Cork Examiner was founded in 1841, the Irish Times in 1859, the Irish Independent and the Evening Herald in 1891 and the Evening Echo in 1892, the only exception being the Irish Daily Star, launched in February 1988.

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delivered in 1892 (Mitchell & O’Snodaigh 86). In order to do so, I will first present the

state of the daily press of the Republic of Ireland today and its apparent prosperity despite

traditionally hostile conditions, before concentrating on two of its essential

characteristics: strong competition from powerful British media groups and a growing

tendency to concentrate.

Since they first appeared in the first half of the 18 th century, Irish daily newspapers

have had to face hostile conditions, especially on three levels: geographical, political and

economic. First of all, Ireland is a small country, with a small population whose evolution

throughout the XIXth and XXth centuries is unique in Europe (Lee 511). Considering the

Southern part of the island, known since 1948 as the Republic of Ireland, the total

population was in 2002 slightly under 4 million2, which means that existing newspapers

have to share a potential market of just over three million adults, by no means

comparable with the huge British, French or German markets. Beside strictly commercial

consequences, the size of the market may influence the very profile of the national press,

as Fintan O’Toole, the famous writer and Irish Times journalist, puts it:

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. [...]There is no easy way out of that, it has to do with the size of the market […]3.

In other words, while in other countries The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, La Repubblica

or Die Franfkürter Allgemeine can afford to stick to the upper end of the market, Irish

newspapers in Ireland - as in other small countries - may be tempted to widen their range

of audience if they do not want to be strictly limited to some happy few.

On a political level, control over newspapers has always been particularly strong in

Ireland, especially since the development of Catholic and nationalist titles following

Daniel O’Connell’s campaigns for Catholic emancipation and for the repeal of Union

with Britain in the 1830s and 1840s (Nowlan 16). Censorship, however, was by no means

the exclusive practice of the British authorities in Ireland, and remained very strong after

the foundation of the Free State in 1922. The Censorship Act of 1929, for example,

2 According to the 2002 census of population, the total population of the Republic of Ireland was 3,917,203, including 3,089,775 adults (aged over 15). 3 Interview with the author in Perpignan (France), March 2001.

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allowed the authorities to forbid any publication that they would judge “indecent or

obscene” (Murphy 62), while the 1937 Constitution, largely drafted by the nationalist

leader Eamon de Valera himself, stated that “the publication or utterance of blasphemous,

seditious or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with

law” (Bunreacht na nÉireann 134). According to Irish historian Joseph Lee, this

implacable censorship had for ambition to impose an illusory vision of Ireland as an

island of virtue surrounded by an ocean of vice (Lee 145). Times have changed, of

course, but at the beginning of the 21st century, Irish defamation laws are still widely

considered as being among the most draconian in the so-called developed world. Irish

newspapers are also far from being privileged when it comes to economic conditions,

since Ireland is probably the EU state to do the least for its press, with the highest VAT

on newspapers (Robinet & Guérin 53) – at 12.5% - and few advantages in terms of postal

fares, expedition costs or tax cuts. This probably explains why Irish newspapers are

among the most expensive in Europe and cost, on average, twice as much as their British

rivals4. All these conditions may partly explain why the Republic of Ireland has only six

daily titles, of which only three may be said to have a truly national dimension.

The Irish Independent has been for many years Ireland’s best selling newspaper,

and is the only one to be read by all the classes of the population throughout the country5.

It was founded in 1891, following divisions within the Nationalist Party after Charles

Parnell’s death. After the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922, it went on supporting

pro-Treaty parties against de Valera’s “republican” Fianna Fáil Party. Recently, however,

as John Horgan, Professor of Journalism at Dublin City University, puts it, it tends to be

“commercially rather than politically or ideologically driven” (Horgan 51). The Irish

Independent is the pillar of Tony O’Reilly’s Independent News and Media Group, which

owns many other Irish titles and holds shares in media in many countries around the

world – including in Portugal where, until last year, Independent News and Media held

shares in the Portuguese company Lusomondo Media, which controls three national

4 In April 2004, for example, both the Irish Times and the Irish Independent cost 1.50 Euro in the Republic of Ireland, against 70 Cents for the Irish Sun or Irish Mirror.5 With average sales reaching 180,000 between January and June 2004, the Irish Independent was read by over half a million people according to an estimation carried out by the Joint National and Readership Research.

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newspapers: Jornal de Notícias, Diário de Notícias and 24 horas. In February this year,

the Irish Independent launched a compact, or tabloid edition, in Dublin, thus following

the latest tendency of several British broadsheets.

The Irish Times is often presented – included by itself – as Ireland’s newspaper of

record, mainly because of its independence, the quality of its financial and international

pages and the reputation of many of its journalists. Founded in 1859 as the organ of the

unionist and Protestant Ascendancy of Dublin, it has managed to accompany the growing

insularity of a traditionally Catholic and nationalist country in such a way that it has

become one of its major references. Today, the Irish Times maintains a distinctly up-

market profile, with most of its readers belonging to the ABC1 classes, and nearly three

quarters of them living in or around Dublin6. Despite the spectacular growth of its sales,

which have tripled since the early 1960s, heavy investments – especially in its website

and in a new printing plant – have led it to serious economic problems recently7.

In spite of its efforts to appear national, the Cork Examiner, now known as Irish

Examiner, remains essentially a regional newspaper, with over 95% of its readers

concentrated in the Munster region. Founded in 1841 with the ambition to become the

voice of moderate nationalism in the South of Ireland, the Examiner – as well as its

evening edition, the Evening Echo – remains an important voice in the Cork region,

without representing a real threat to other papers on the rest of the national territory. The

Evening Herald may also be seen as an essentially regional newspaper, being mostly sold

in or around Dublin. Founded in 1891 and property of Independent News and Media, it

holds a dominant position on the market of the evening press8, and was largely

responsible for the failure of the Dublin Daily, a new paper which was launched last year

but only managed to survive four months9. Finally, the Daily Star is Ireland’s only

sensationalist newspaper in the British tradition of tabloid press. It was founded in 1988

and is still jointly owned by Independent News and Media and by the British United

6 In 2003, 83.6% of the Irish Times readers belonged to the ABC1 classes, and 69% of them lived in Greater Dublin. 7 The average sales of the Irish Times reached 116,000 in 2004, against 36,000 in 1956. In October 2001, however, the editor of The Irish Times announced losses estimated at around 2 million Irish pounds, mostly due to its Internet edition, and a plan to cut down about 250 jobs (out of 700).8 The average sales of the Evening Herald were 92,510 between January and June 2004, against 23.841 for the Evening Echo, its only rival on the market of evening newspapers. 9 Launched in March 2003, the Dublin Daily successively became Dublin Evening Daily and Dublin Evening before disappearing in July of that same year, having failed to find its own niche.

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News & Media Group, property of Richard Desmond, whose nickname of «king of porn»

gives some idea of his journalistic principles10. Despite the traditionally hostile conditions

described earlier on, the Irish daily press seems relatively healthy, as the following table

shows:

Table 1: circulation of Irish daily newspapers 1995-2003

TITLE

(launch date)

OWNER AVERAGE

CIRCULATION

1995

AVERAGE

CIRCULATION

2003

EVOLUTION

1995-2003

The Irish

Independent

(1891)

Independent

News & Media

(INM)

153,733 161,880 + 5.3%

The Irish Times

(1859)

Irish Times

Trust Limited

97,089 116,534 + 20%

The Irish Daily

Star

(1988)

INM / United

News & Media

81,497 109,139 + 33.9%

The Irish

Examiner

(1841)

Thomas Crosbie

Holdings

52,932 59,821 + 13%

The Evening

Herald

(1891)

Independent

News & Media

110,187 97,973 - 11%

The Evening

Echo

(1892)

Thomas Crosbie

Holdings

24,682 28,071 + 13.7%

TOTAL 520,120 573,418 + 10.25%

Source: Joint National Readership Research

With only six daily titles available, Irish people bought last year 570,000 Irish daily

newspapers every day, a growth of 50,000, or 10.5%, in relation to 1995. The total of

newspapers sold in the country, however, has risen by some 135,000, or 20% over the

same period, which is largely due to the dramatic growth in the sales of British

10 Richard Desmond, already owner of titles such as Asian Babes, Nude Readers’ Wives or Big Ones, bought the Express Group in 2000, consequently becoming O’Reilly’s partner since the Irish Daily star is still jointly owned by the Express Group and by Independent News and Media.

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newspapers in the Republic of Ireland, a phenomenon that has become increasingly

crucial in the last decade.

In 1996, the Commission on the Newspaper Industry, nominated after the polemic

around the death of the Irish Press in 1995, stated the conditions for a newspaper to be

considered Irish: it must be published on Irish territory, direct its content to the Irish

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

be printed and distributed by persons working in Ireland Most of these conditions may

apply to a growing number of British titles for sale in Ireland, which tend to be produced

entirely on Irish territory and to include more and more Irish contents (Horgan 160).

Reflecting this evolution, the association in charge of controlling the circulation of

newspapers in Ireland included last year for the first time within its “national press”

section two of the nine British newspapers for sale in Ireland: the Irish Daily Mirror and

the Irish Sun11. These two titles, respectively owned by Trinity Mirror and by Rupert

Murdoch’s News International, sold together some 195,000 papers every day last year.

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

were British12. This phenomenon is not recent, powerful British media groups having

always found in Ireland a natural extension of their market, encouraged by cultural

proximity and a common language. It is by no means unique either, with countries like

Austria, Luxemburg, Belgium or even Scotland being victims of the same phenomenon

usually defined as multinational (Bertrand 48). However, the situation in Ireland 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 Kingdom13, and to invest

heavily in the Celtic Tiger’s market. As Eddie Holt put it in an article entitled “Who’s

watching the media?” a few years ago,

Ireland, like the rest of the world, is merely a market to be serviced and exploited by big international media outfits. Technology, globalization and economics have ensured that native media in small economies are under pressure (The Irish Times, Dec. 2, 2000).

11 The same could be said of Ireland on Sunday, bought by Associated Newspapers (owner of the Daily Mail) from Scottish Radio Holdings in September 2001.12 227,000 out of a total of 674,000, or 33.7%.13 This is relative, of course, since the Sun and the Mirror sold around 3.5 million and 2 million copies on average last year, against , respectively, 4 and 5 million in the mid 1960s.

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As a result, in the last ten years, the sales of British newspapers in Ireland have increased

much more than those of their Irish-owned rivals, as the following table shows:

Table 2: circulation of British daily newspapers in Ireland 1995-2003

TITLE OWNER AVERAGE

CIRCULATION

1995

AVERAGE

CIRCULATION

2003

EVOLUTION

1995-2003

The Irish Mirror Trinity Mirror 60,204 79,448 + 32%

The Irish Sun News

International

55,972 114,977 + 105.4%

The Daily

Express

United News &

Media

3,785 4,270 + 12.8%

The Daily Mail Associated

Newspapers

3,678 8,801 + 139.3%

The Daily

Telegraph

Telegraph Group

Ltd (Hollinger

Int. Inc.)

6,382 3,468 - 45.7%

The Financial

Times

Pearson 3,131 4,332 + 38.4%

The Guardian Scott Trust 2,250 3,880 + 72.4%

The Independent Independent

News & Media

4,614 1,872 - 38.4%

The Times News

International

3,535 4,675 + 32.2%

TOTAL 143,551 225,723 + 57.2%

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulation/ Joint National Readership Research

Indeed, since the closure of the Irish Press Group in 1995, the total circulation of

British newspapers in Ireland has increased by over 57%, against 10 for their Irish rivals.

As a consequence, the share of British newspapers in the total of newspapers sold in the

Republic of Ireland has risen from 21.6% in 1995 to 28.2% last year, reaching a peak of

32% on the overcrowded market of Sunday newspapers14. Nowadays, of course, nobody

14 There are no less than 14 Sunday newspapers available to readers in the Republic of Ireland, with total sales of 1,261,000. We can divide them in three groups. On the one hand, there are four Irish titles, three of them being controlled by Independent News & Media, with the Sunday Business Post now in the hands of

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would claim, as a history of the press in Ireland did in the 1930s, that British newspapers

are

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 173).

But this phenomenon may nonetheless have heavy consequences for the Irish press and,

to a certain extent, for Irish society in general, on at least three levels: journalistic,

economic and even political.

Firstly, while Irish newspapers were for many years able to boast that they weren’t

guilty of the worst excesses of the most sensationalist British popular press (Hussey 339,

A. & K. O’Meara 4), Irish tabloids – and not only! - may come to learn a lot from their

British rivals with which they are now competing on a daily basis. In other words, there is

a risk of what some observers already call a “murdochisation” of the Irish press.

Secondly, 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 which, although by far the wealthiest

Irish newspaper group, is still “a relatively small fish in the ocean in which Murdoch and

other media giants swim”, to quote John Horgan again (Horgan 51). Among others, the

National Newspaper Association of Ireland complains about the situation:

The threat to indigenous media posed by British media companies, who are quite obviously intent on utilising Ireland to increase overall circulation, is something […] the Irish government needs to address. 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).

Thirdly, British newspapers on sale in Ireland pay a growing attention to Irish politics,

and Murdoch’s titles openly took sides in recent general elections15, suggesting that they

may be tempted to reproduce in Ireland their ability to make or break governments or

Thomas Crosbie Holdings, also owner of the Examiner: the Sunday Independent (sales between January and June 2004: 291,000), the Sunday World (268,000), the Sunday Tribune (87,000) and the Sunday Business Post (52,000). On the other hand, the British newspapers which have an Irish edition are Ireland on Sunday (152,000), News of the World (166,000), the Sunday Mirror (45,000), the People (52,000) and the Sunday Times (105,000). Finally, the London newspapers without any Irish edition are the Mail on Sunday (16,000), the Sunday Express (8,500), the Independent on Sunday (3,500), the Observer (12,000) and the Sunday Telegraph (3,000). 15 For example, Murdoch’s two Sunday titles, News of the World and the SundayTimes, representing together over 200,000 newspapers

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political leaders in Britain. On the whole, for many years, Irish nationalists tended to

concentrate on a potential foreign threat and to close their eyes to another important

characteristic of the Irish press: its concentration.

In the wake of globalization, the concentration of various newspapers in the hands

of one or two media groups has become quite common in many European countries

(including Portugal). In Ireland, however, this tendency is taken to an extreme with one

single group - Independent News & Media - controlling two thirds of the national titles

sold every weekday, and over three quarters on Sundays16. Occasionally, this group has

even come to defy its powerful British rivals on their own grounds, like when it bought

the agonizing London Independent in 1997 or, more recently, the Belfast Telegraph17,

thus extending its dominant position to Northern Ireland. This situation allows the

chairman of INM, Tony O’Reilly, to appear as the champion of Irish resistance against

invasion by foreign – meaning British - newspapers. When faced with the accusation of

representing a threat to the diversity of the national press, the Irish tycoon argues that

anything is better than falling into the hands of a foreign group. This position, however,

raises a fundamental question: is depending on a big Irish multinational systematically

better than belonging to a big British multinational?

In his introduction to a collection of essays entitled Media in Ireland: the Search for

Diversity and published in 1997, Damien Kiberd, an Irish journalist himself, 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 8).

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

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

matters. In its conclusion, the Commission on the Newspaper Industry warned against the

danger that

16 Among daily newspapers, Independent News & Media owns the Irish Independent, the Evening Herald and half of the Star, as well as the Sunday Independent and the Sunday World; it also controls the Sunday Tribune. 17 Best selling newspaper in Northern Ireland, until then property of Trinity Mirror.

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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 163).

What can be said, 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 Sundays? And where, with the notable exceptions of the Irish Times

and the Examiner, all the national newspapers belong to one powerful international

group?

To conclude, although usual indicators may make the daily press of the Republic of

Ireland appear relatively healthy, a deeper study of its characteristics tends to reveal that

it actually finds itself in a particularly fragile situation, mainly because of two factors. On

the one hand, over fifty years after the declaration of the Irish Republic and the breaking

of the last constitutional ties with Britain18, the daily press of the Republic of Ireland has

still not quite managed to emancipate from Britain. On the other hand, over the years, it

has seen a growing number of its titles fall into hands of Tony O’Reilly’s Independent

News & Media group, therefore putting at risk the diversity of its national press19. To face

both these dangers, Irish newspapers are quite left to themselves since successive Irish

governments have always refused to intervene. Even the death of the Irish Press Group in

1994 did not bring the Irish government to do anything for the nationalist title which was

the symbol of a Gaelic, rural, Catholic and Republican Ireland defended by its founder

Eamon de Valera. What is at stake, however, is much more than the commercial interests

of the daily press of the Republic of Ireland, it may well be its very survival as a national

institution.

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18 Following the proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1948, Ireland left the Commonwealth in 1949. 19 Beside the national titles mentioned above, Independent News and Media has taken control of many regional and local newspapers in the past decade.

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