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THE RAPIDLY GROWING suburbs of Dublin city are at risk of becoming ‘news deserts’, a new study of Ireland’s local media landscape has found.
The report author has said local journalism is struggling across Ireland, limiting coverage of local courts and councils and leaving communities underinformed about what’s happening in their area.
A ‘news desert’ is an area that lacks a reliable news service. The term originated in the US to describe areas with no news outlets and no professional journalists covering local issues and developments.
The issue has been highlighted ahead of local and EU elections in just over four weeks’ time, with concerns about the potential for widespread disinformation to go unchecked.
The report focuses on detecting challenges and opportunities for local and community media, and identifying news deserts in the 27 EU Member States.
Dr Eileen Culloty, Deputy Director at the DCU Institute for Media, Democracy and Society (FuJo) wrote the Ireland section of the report.
The report outlined that currently, there is little evidence of news deserts in Ireland. However, it found that the suburbs of Dublin, most notably north county Dublin, are at an immediate risk of becoming news deserts.
The report said these suburbs lack a media presence commensurate with their size.
This follows the closure of the North County Leader and Fingal Independent at a time when the population of the region has increased significantly.
Although a new innovative outlet, the Dublin Inquirer, has emerged to fill this gap, there is no indication that similar outlets will emerge in other parts of the country, the report said.
The report found the erosion of independent, locally-owned media is considered to be a “threat to community life”.
Speaking to The Journal, Dr Culloty said she doesn’t know if there are any areas of the country where local journalism is “thriving”.
“In Ireland, we’re very wedded to our county-based identity. In every single county you can name a local media outlet, whether it’s a newspaper or a radio station that covers it,” she said.
“If you look at what they do, a lot of them are really struggling to field journalists to go and attend courts and attend council meetings or they’re relying heavily on press releases,” Dr Culloty said.
The risk for local and community media was assessed through several indicators, related to the number of media outlets, economic and political conditions, as well as the degree of safety of local journalists and the social inclusiveness of local and community media towards minorities, marginalised communities and the capability of engaging with the audience.
Two of the six indicators used in the report are presented as a “medium risk” in Ireland, one of which being ‘Market and Reach’.
The report notes that 26 of the 61 local titles (print and online) represented by the Press Council are owned by just two companies: the UK-based Iconic Newspapers and the Dutch-based Mediahuis.
The ‘Uncovering news deserts in Europe: Risks and opportunities for local and community media in the EU’ is available here.
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The misinformation in this country is coming from RTE, VIRGIN MEDIA, IRISH TIMES AND YOURSELVES THE JOURNAL.. covering up government propaganda!
@Andrew Martin: Covering up Government propoganda???
@Andrew Martin: Irish Independent OK?? Sun?? Irish Daily Mail?? Newstalk??
@Andrew Martin: What National/International news organisations would you consider reliable and therefore recommend to everybody?
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: In the last Referenda, Micheal Martin, Helen Mc Entee, Leo Varadkar, Roderic O Gorman & Norma Foley were all interviewed on TV, they all blatantly misled the Public as was proved by the leak from the Attorney General’s office in relation to the advice given by the AG. These senior politicians all spoke of Misinformation, when in fact they were the ones most guilty of Misinformation. All the MSM aided them, no questions, a one sided debate & even their reporting of polls was fake news. The people saw through it & delivered a message that went unheeded. An even bigger message is about to be delivered in the locals & European elections. Irish people no longer trust any authority in Ireland, Irish people are slow to react, but when they do, it will be an explosion.
@Andrew Martin: The journal could certainly never be accused of being unbiased and is little more than a platform for constant pro illegal immigration and far left activists.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: Great article by John Kierans in the Irish Mirror yesterday, calling things as they are, no journalists in the other media outlets. Irish Examiner is as far left as PBP & losing readers at a rate of knots. Recent recruit to Govt ranks from the Examiner with a certain female journalist, shows that most journalists side with Govt in the hope that they pull a Media Advisor, PR, Communications role of some sort. There is no investigative journalism in Ireland anymore, that is why those in Govt, RTE, the HSE, Banks, Judiciary, do what they like, as nobody says anything. Only for The Ditch exposing some of our senior politicians, esp the FF crew, we would know nothing of their shenanigans, as MSM give them a free ride. Our Gardai have become politicized along with our Media.
@Andrew Martin: A 100% Andrew,couldn’t have put it better.
@SV3tN8M4: Not just the AG but officials from within the departments,as we now now from the Interdepartmental documents. HMc said pre referendum’There are not going to be, suddenly, an influx of people coming, saying that they have a different application that they can apply here because the law is very clear.” “It’s very narrow for very clear purposes” yet from within her own department she was being told “It is not an exaggeration to say that it will be extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible, to maintain a meaningful immigration system should the People accept these amendments.” Just one of the lies that were told. Catherine Martin went against the governments own electoral commission on misinformation..which is coming from all angles and not least from our own government.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: Not reporting on the Interdepartmental records from the build up to the referendum,which are now available under FOI..which exposes the blatant lies this government told the people is a cover up. Most media outlets,this one included, gave free reign to this government, its misinformation and propaganda during the referdum ‘debate’. They are however very shy about reporting the actual truth in the aftermath.. so yes that makes them complicint is government propaganda.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: After the recent referendum and the biased reporting of many MSM in this country, the list is small for many. Ah but see all the folk in government, their support, media, virtue signallers and NGO’s who literally tried to tell people how to vote and it was only yes or you were one of “them” went quietly into the night when the result exposed them for what they were…..even the media buried the whole thing fast cos the majority had backed the wrong horse
@Andrew Martin: sure it is, haven’t heard a story that is true yet, from far right media.
They put out that little girl had died, in parnell St with out a thought for her family.
Glad to say that wasn’t true.
Using people for their own agenda.
Pray tell what actual policies these groups actually have to solve these problems.
@colette byrne: At least name the ‘far-right’ media outlets you’re talking about? Because that’s rather important here… And don’t just gloss over the governments/MSMs referendum propaganda campaign.. surely you have an opinion about being lied to on such a grand scale by your own government and the MSM ?
@Andrew Martin: Oh dear God. It’s funny we mock Americans & Fox News but good God we’re turning into them.
Here’s how Josef Stalin solved a similar problem in the USSR:
Q: How was the Pravda linked to propaganda?
A: By controlling the information that the public received, the PRAVDA helped to maintain the dominance of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. It influenced public opinion, reinforced party loyalty, and suppressed dissent. In this way, the PRAVDA was closely linked to the concept of propaganda.
@Staker Wallace: Which is completely irrelevant. Pravda would be impossible now.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: hmmm, I don’t know. Tass and the rest of the Kremlin mouthpieces come fairly close. No independent news there don’t forget.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: I wouldn’t be surprised to see emergency legislation being introduced to combat all the ”online misinformation” we’ve been hearing so much about lately.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: How or Earth do you believe that?
Have you never seen RT?
The Irish Times report on the demonstration in Dublin on Monday put the crowd at ‘several hundred people’, when it was obvious to anyone that there were in fact several thousands at it .
The Irish Times also put the number of counter demonstrators at 200 when they could be counted individually at 80
So much for this lot lecturing us about misinformation and disinformation or as we used to call it telling lies
@Gwantipp: in a drone video uploaded by one of the main speakers and party leaders by the GPO, there looked to be about 3-400 tops. Where did all the rest of them go? Ducked off before all the speeches?
Some of local media news wraps are full of adverts and no local news stories and it’s true about their content, mobile phones inform locals what’s happening in their area.
We are almost at the point of no return! The shock jocks on social media, the GB News, Fox, CNN, twitter/X Faceplant, instagram and all of the other loonies out there have achieved the goal of pitting us all against each other. All for commercial domination. And they don’t give a fiddlers the damage that they cause, the hate they spew, the blame they place. To be honest, if you want to blame anyone, just look in the mirror because we have all fallen for it hook line and sinker! Enjoy the devastation you wanted!
@Shay Dunne: This Govt have pitted the people against each other, Far Right v Far left, Public v Private workers, Rank & file Gardai v Commissioner & Minister, they have destroyed those working in our teaching, nursing, doctors, policing professions. Irish people are well able to source their own information & well able to disseminate the facts from the fiction. It’s propaganda itself to say that the Irish public are unable or are influenced by outside social media. The Irish public were well able to see through all the lies before the Referendums, the Govt has being adept at sowing the devastation you speak of.
@Shay Dunne: Calm down lad I remember ministers with fat bank accounts on RTE when the crash hit telling young people who were unemployed to basically get out of the country and the government of the day pitting people against each other to distract from the fact we bailed out the banks/developers and one of those cabinet ministers whos the FF leader recently denied we ever bailed out the banks…..and lets not even talk about the damage those mutants in RTE and their mates in the MSN did to the mental health of the elderly during covid with the nightly fear mongering and telling people like my parents not to even hug their own grandkids cos it would kill them…..so please enough trying to say the problem lies with the list you have. They are all one pile of disgusting vermin out to make money and do the bidding of whoever pays the most
@Shay Dunne: Does this explain why we have a TikTok Taoiseach?
Came here for ‘New Desserts’ but found nothing delicious about this article
Nobody trusts mainstream news anymore and most of it negative biased reporting
“The most commonly recorded motive was anti-race (36%).”
I am from the Human Race; what ‘race’ is everyone else from?
This is not an issue of playing with words; prejudice will always be present within society, but the idea of ‘races’ is a self-inflicted wound as an evolutionary narrative.
The opportunity to remove prejudice via news outlets and comment sections like this one is met with the defence of Victorian natural selection. People are more comfortable with the notion of ‘races’ than they are with prejudice because then it comes down to individual consideration and responsibility rather than a tribal thing.
It is the only way I can account for the support of a dangerous academic conviction responsible for so much misery and death.
@Gerald Kelleher: I’m from the 3:40 in Naas
@Alan: Are you sure you are not from the Celt ‘race’ earmarked for extermination because you lack intelligence?
“The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman, fed on potatoes, living in a pig-stye, doting on a superstition, multiplies like rabbits or ephemera. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts-and in a dozen generations, five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal ‘struggle for existence,’ it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed by virtue not of its qualities but of its faults, by reason not of its stronger vitality but of its weaker reticence and its narrower brain.” Charles Darwin
This comments thread is a headbangers ball!
I understand why the Journal closes comments on so many articles. Commentary has become uniformly negative and vituperative. People have become slaves to social media and hide their unthinking ignorance behind slogans and political catcalls.
Sad. Time was, we were a civil, reflective society.
@Nick Vasilakis: When was that time exactly? Was it when FF and FG governments turned a blind eye to rape, torture and theft by a cabal of pedophiles aka the Catholic Church.
Was it when young girls were put into slavery in Magdalene laundries as a punishment for getting raped and/or knocked up.
Was it when 48 young people burned to death and their families left without closure for 44 years?
To blame social media for our hills is lunacy. Our problems spring forth from a time that predates social media. You might as well blame the rotary dial telephone or the record player.
Social media may fuel a reactionary fire and associated problems, but the reaction is to a malaise that has blighted Irish politics for at least the half century of it I’ve witnessed
I seem to remember back in the day that while dev was president he was editor of 4 national newspaper, if one looks at the Murducks gutter press stoking up fear and hatred against minorities, News deserts are nothing new ,
People used to buy their local paper mostly for the local GAA fixtures and results. All that is online now and people won’t pick up the other local news at all now.
People who used to believe what they read in the paper now believe what they read online by unqualified people and published without an editor looking at it. Another generation know nothing different
Not saying the papers always got it right but it was far better than the current situation.
I don’t think local papers will see a resurgence but we definitely need a reliable alternative to citizen journalists and extreme agitators holding sway.
I don’t think it’s pertaining to an area; more likely a demographic. It’s possible to spend the day between a smartphone, a radio,and a television set without receiving a single piece of reliable news,depending on which channels are selected. Back in the day, TV channels were limited,yet everybody was sitting in front of the box.You were exposed to the News whether you wanted to watch it or not. Likewise,for informative documentaries and current affairs.
Seriously?
Given the half-truths, censorship by omission and Corporate “truth” our MSM feeds, a news desert sounds like a great idea.
There are a constrant stream of comments on here claiming this website is a propaganda tool for the government. Why do those who believe this keep visiting the site?
If only journalists were protected from violent young Irish male single military age man boys from Dublin housing estates, then they would get their news!
Well if these ‘patriots’ are submitting comments on websites (like this one), then at least they aren’t out there in the real world directly causing problems for actual people in the most immediate terms. As the subject of literally several hundred incidents (logged with Clondalkin and Kildare Gardai) all perpetrated on me and my ex-wife by the ‘cream’ of Irish society……..I’m Irish……..I want to recommend a seventh level of a particularly sulphery and heat-hazed place to those responsible. Oh, I should have sued the backside off the woman in Monasterevin who (without consulting a lawyer) stated publicly she’d “do the same again” after I was misidentified on Facebook as Anthony Luckwill. If you can’t deal with your own internal issues, lack even insight into them and walk/talk/type without any awareness, you’re not a “patriot”, you’re just a problem masquerading as a developed, functional person. Real patriots undertake the work of being self-aware. Opportunists look for ‘The Other’to target. You have my enduring and most sincere c-o-n-t-e-m-p-t.
It’s fairly simple…. If people want to be informed about local issues and news they can search lots of reliable sources. Lots of people out there will believe anything the far right pump out… But most will do proper research
@Blue Moon: Would you consider The Irish Times,for example,a reliable source ?
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