Media trying to infuence result?

il gatto

For the first couple of weeks, the media seemed happy to give balanced coverage of the campaign, and the general consensus was a Fine Gael/Labour and possbly Greens coalition winning the election. Since the leaders debate last Thursday, the radio and print media have seemingly turned on those parties and a surge in popularity is the result for Fianna Fail.
Newstalk had Nell McCafferty on, making light of Willie O'Dea's lies about using cannabis (couldn't care less if he did, but his excuses were pathetic and unbelievable), then on Monday they carry out a voxpop apparently on Dublin's Nothside (Bertie's stomping ground) with the inevitable Fianna Fail landslide.
RTE had Eoghan Harris turning his coat to support Bertie on the Late Late show. General consensus in the media of the debate was that Bertie won, despite the points Bertie scored were from being obtuse when having figures explained to him (like reasoning with a bold six year old), sh1tting a brick when he thought he'd be asked too much about his still unsatisfactorary explanations about his finances, and his rather bizzaar proclamation that the health service was not in crisis, and moreover, the government should be congratulated for how they've managed it. He also retorted that the health service was "joined up" and it was called the "HSE", an institution almost reviled by the people, like that counted in the governments favour.
Seeing as the election is so finely balanced, and that the incumbant government has at most 51-52% of support, does anyone else feel that the media has written of the opposition, and is easing the electorate into accepting the result as a given? Does anyone, hoping for a change in government, feel that there's been a disporportionate amount of pro Fianna Fail coverage?

andylfc77

100% right, when poll came out Sunday evening RTE were giddy with excitement, we already know about Fianna Fails deal with the Sunday independent, how many on the RTE board of directors are closely linked?

Moved to the news and media board

redspider

Overall, I've been dissapointed with RTE's lack of impartiallity during this election. It hasnt all been one way taffic of course and many reports and discussions etc are impartial. But many have not, including the FF/FG leaders debate and the ensuing analysis/reporting of it.

You are right, the 41% (+5%) national opinion poll was reported with giddiness levels on RTE, even delight!

Lets also not forget that FF/PD have given RTE very generous conditions over the last 10 years allowing huge increases in salary's all the way down the line and a huge increase in license fees, etc. With that background, and with many RTE staff living within south county Dublin and not far from Donnybrook, RTE is never going to be fully impartial at all times.

Whilst that type of social-ecomomic class group was traditionally FG supporters, over the recent decades, many within that class group have switched from FG to FF whilst FG lost their way. FG have never replaced Garret Fitzgerald and that is a problem which remans to this day.

RTE should be radically changed/improved in my opinion. No party wants to deal with it though, at least not pre-election anyway!

Redspider

Andrew 83

I agree.

The most bizarre thing though is that this has happened without any coverage of any FF policies. The only FF policy I can think of offhand is that they're going to cut taxes more than the Rainbow would. Anything else has been 'sustaining permanent peace' and other vagueities. In contrast there's been loads of coverage of the actual opposition plans, just this has been accompanied by FF mud slinging that the policies are unworkable.

haz

redspider wrote:

Overall, I've been dissapointed with RTE's lack of impartiallity during this election

I like Paddy Power's version of commentary, which I was pointed to only yesterday, as it is driven only by the weight of bets and profit margins.

FF/LAB government lead by Bertie Ahern, Harney and McDowell in opposition (replaced by Liam Twomey and Jim O'Keeffe) with slim chance of losing their seats.

Piggery escapee Noel O'Flynn (sadly) to keep his seat in Cork North Central unless spring chicken and singer-songwriter Gerry Kelly can put in some serious handshaking over the next 30 hours.

http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action=go_type&category=SPECIALS&disp_cat_id=31&ev_class_id=33&ev_type_id=694

gbh

I hate it when the media declare that its all over bar the voting, which implies somehow that its futile to resist...the Irish media struggles to be impartial probably because the country is so small. Politicians live side by side with the media, drink with them and all that...also because of the competition between media outlets you can't really burn your boats with a political party because they might be in power soon.

haz

haz wrote:

I like Paddy Power's version of commentary .... FF/LAB government lead by Bertie Ahern, Harney and McDowell in opposition (replaced by Liam Twomey and Jim O'Keeffe) with slim chance of losing their seats.

Michael has just bowed out! I will be taking my political commentary from Paddy Power from now on - the Irish Times actually described the RTE exit poll as "FF-PD alliance strong" when RTE said "FF strong". I guess Mary Harney will no longer have her health portfolio.... With any luck education can get a new face too.

The Muppet

I think a lot of the media tried to influence the result rather than report the news in this election.

Take the TV debate for example, this was the start of the FF recovery, Ahern obviously won that by a country mile punching holes in many of Kennys contract promises, Tax , Gardai , Health, Enda made major gaffs on all thes issues yet the media didn't report it in that way.

IMO The Irish electorate realised what the media was up to and didn't fall for it, I think media coverage did work against FG/Labour but that was not their intention.

mike65

This is slightly off-topic but is the Dublin media completely out of touch? Or did they in a sub-concious way want to FF/PDs out as after 10 years they were getting too boring for them?

Mike.

monument

il gatto wrote:

For the first couple of weeks, the media seemed happy to give balanced coverage of the campaign, and the general consensus was a Fine Gael/Labour and possbly Greens coalition winning the election.

Hmm...

il gatto wrote:

Since the leaders debate last Thursday, the radio and print media have seemingly turned on those parties and a surge in popularity is the result for Fianna Fail.

You'll find that in the first case the "Fine Gael/Labour and possbly Greens" idea was due to poll results, the public "turned" on those parties after the leaders debate, one of the polls after it showed such.

il gatto wrote:

General consensus in the media of the debate was that Bertie won

It wasn't that general of a consensus there were a number of commentators who somehow saw Kenny walking away well with it. Kenny made a fool of him self, while Bertie stayed settled, Kenny acted like a boy scout.

il gatto wrote:

Does anyone, hoping for a change in government, feel that there's been a disporportionate amount of pro Fianna Fail coverage?

It looks like you have no complaints about when "the general consensus was a Fine Gael/Labour and possbly Greens coalition winning the election", that's rather funny that. isn't it?

The Muppet wrote:

Take the TV debate for example, this was the start of the FF recovery, Ahern obviously won that by a country mile punching holes in many of Kennys contract promises, Tax , Gardai , Health, Enda made major gaffs on all thes issues yet the media didn't report it in that way.

I was quite shocked that anybody could have reported that Kenny came away well from that.

The Muppet wrote:

I think a lot of the media tried to influence the result rather than report the news in this election.

The media does much more then just report the news.

mike65 wrote:

This is slightly off-topic but is the Dublin media completely out of touch?

Most of the time, yes. But it's not something new

redspider wrote:

RTE should be radically changed/improved in my opinion.

That's very subjective wording in a very subjective statement.

The Muppet

monument wrote:

The media does much more then just report the news.

The Media is such a broad term, I assume we are talking of the news media here. Their primary objective should be to report the news in an accurate and non biased way. They clearly have not done that in this election.

Fianna Fail campaigners said all along that they were not detecting "a mood for change" on the doorsteps. Now you would expect them to say that but in this instance they were right.

That begs the questions was the mood for change just a media concoction and if so why? Across the water the media have been very influential in election outcomes. The irish electorate are intelliegent enough to not allow themselves be influenced by media spin.

dudara

I found the Irish Independent quite amusing throughout the campaign.

At one stage, they featured 4 pie charts, based on an opinion poll. In 3 of the 4, FF were ahead, and in the 4th, FG was ahead by 3% (3% would be a normal margin of error on such polls).

Based on this one pie chart, the headline proclaimed that the public backed FG.

monument

Well, the opposition receive more coverage, that looks to be clear...

looking at the same trend for Irish media only, shows an insignificant spike on that day while Fine Gael was the clear winner...

This shows how much coverage each individual leader has received since the start of the campaign. As you can see, Enda Kenny has dominated the coverage since Fianna Fáil's manifesto launch with Pat Rabbitte even outpacing Bertie Ahern on most days....

Interestingly, the three main parties have a pretty even spread across the regions, although Fine Gael and Labour have a much bigger story count (1106) verses FF's 641.

http://www.rte.ie/news/elections2007/tracker1.html

spalad

il gatto wrote:

Does anyone, hoping for a change in government, feel that there's been a disporportionate amount of pro Fianna Fail coverage?

The media need Bertie and Bertie needs the media. Any other view is, frankly, ridiculous.
http://kerryview.blogspot.com/2007/05/bertie-ahern-unhappy-with-intrusive.html

flogen

dudara wrote:

I found the Irish Independent quite amusing throughout the campaign.

At one stage, they featured 4 pie charts, based on an opinion poll. In 3 of the 4, FF were ahead, and in the 4th, FG was ahead by 3% (3% would be a normal margin of error on such polls).

Based on this one pie chart, the headline proclaimed that the public backed FG.

Was it FF 3% ahead of FG? If so, that's a huge win for FG considering their coalition partner would easily pick up the slack

jdivision

Newspapers have no requirement to be impartial. Indo and Sindo in particular were very pro-Ahern. Broadcast media have a requirement to be balanced and I don't think that happened. Gerry Ryan and Ray D'Arcy are two obviously biased towards FF and made it clear all through the election.