Media reporting

zig

A massive blatant positive spin put on a story by RTE this morning makes me wonder are they do doing this so as not to damage confidence any more than it already is?
I have to admit I was one of the first to give out about the media adding fuel to the fire 2 years, I felt they were seriously damaging confidence , that said they had to report the facts I guess.
But I just wonder is the opposite going on here?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20110104/tuk-30-firms-failed-every-week-in2010-e1cd776.html

Thirty firms went bust every week last year, a business study has revealed.
30 firms failed every week in 2010 Enlarge photo



More than 1,500 companies were declared insolvent during 2010, according to statistics complied by insolvencyjournal.ie.
As expected, the construction sector was hardest hit with 472 companies, 30% of total, unable to pay wages and bills.
Ken Fennell, a partner with kavanaghfennell which compiled the data, said the figures were not as bad as had been feared.
"2010 saw no let-up in the number of businesses becoming insolvent, although the increase on the 2009 figure is not as bad as some had predicted," he said.
"2011 will again be a very difficult year for Irish businesses, and particularly the retail and hospitality sectors will see a large number of failures.".......................

and now for RTE
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0104/insolvencies-business.html

Number of insolvencies not as high as feared

Over 1,500 companies were declared insolvent last year, according to the latest figures.

Over 1,500 companies were declared insolvent last year, according to the latest figures. The businesses most affected by closures were property companies, restaurants, hotels, retail and motor companies.
Accountants Kavanagh Fennell say that while there was no let-up in the number of companies being declared insolvent in 2010, the increase on 2009 was not as high as expected...........................................

thebman

I think sometimes its spin and sometimes its incompetence and poor writing.

It is hard to tell sometimes which is which.

I think RTE do the opposite of most media and try to avoid shocking headlines recently alright. All their headlines are, "things not as bad as many say" and then you read the article and although its trying to avoid saying it, it still does say that thing are in fact still getting worse.

Atilathehun

thebman wrote: »

I think sometimes its spin and sometimes its incompetence and poor writing.

It is hard to tell sometimes which is which.

I think RTE do the opposite of most media and try to avoid shocking headlines recently alright. All their headlines are, "things not as bad as many say" and then you read the article and although its trying to avoid saying it, it still does say that thing are in fact still getting worse.

They do brilliant investigative work to show drug dealers and pushers peddling their wares in poor inner city locations. Never cought you know who in RTE, buying the stuff:cool:
If the media told me today was Wednesday, I would check the calender.

Then again, if there was any real sustained positive economic news for a period, 90% of the posters to this forum, would be devestated:cool: Most people on here believe the worst case possible will always be the outcome.

Laminations

Atilathehun wrote: »

Then again, if there was any real sustained positive economic news for a period, 90% of the posters to this forum, would be devestated:cool: Most people on here believe the worst case possible will always be the outcome.

We don't (or at least I don't) believe in that, I believe in planning for that. It's a damn sight better then putting out rubbish optimistic predictions only to let the entire nation down (both in terms of morale and reputation) by saying 'oopsy, got that wrong by a couple of billion'. The government couldn't recognise a corner if Mary O Rourke was selling her wares on one.

RTE have definitely taken a softer line with the government. Why aren't the Greens being dragged out to explain where the promise of an election has gone?

thebman

Atilathehun wrote: »

They do brilliant investigative work to show drug dealers and pushers peddling their wares in poor inner city locations. Never cought you know who in RTE, buying the stuff:cool:
If the media told me today was Wednesday, I would check the calender.

Then again, if there was any real sustained positive economic news for a period, 90% of the posters to this forum, would be devestated:cool: Most people on here believe the worst case possible will always be the outcome.

I don't wish to have negative news TBH.

Economically, the government and RTE have been spouting dangerous propaganda in an attempt to talk things up but all this will really do is get some people into situations which will harm them within the next few years that don't really follow all that economic stuff and prefer to just watch RTE and believe what they see.

This is dangerous for the people of Ireland. When you see the government and RTE saying, no the IMF are not coming, don't worry about a thing when they are landing in Dublin airport, most people should know something is up.

It is a different matter entirely when they are trying to convince people the property market is bottoming out and now is a good time to buy and other such nonsense like this when we know there is a good chance interest rates will go up in the short term, taxes will go up in the short term and wages are going to go down so for most people, buying now will most likely leave them over stretched very shortly down the road.

At this stage, I think they have lost all credibility and when things are improving nobody will believe them either and will slow down the actual recovery because they will be the boy who cried wolf.

ei.sdraob

Atilathehun wrote: »

Most people on here believe the worst case possible will always be the outcome.

I dont think many people here expected the IMF to arrive in 2010

that was worse than the worst of predictions/expectations

and yes the media did everything to hide the fact that IMF are in town, it took foreign media journalists to break the news about the country's dire state.

Mister men

Orders from upstairs me thinks.

zig

Tbh, I dont think its an orders from upstairs scenario, although I did up to a few weeks/months ago, but just on further reflection I really cant see how that would be possible without threats from upstairs and subsequent whistleblowers, etc. I dont think there is any hidden agenda, but perhaps a more unspoken rule/culture in there. This may be down to something as simple as them hoping for a decent spending budget or something like that.

Fianna Fail are going to be gone soon so I doubt RTE feel any allegience to them, if anything they should be sucking up to FG/Lab now because that's who they'll be looking at the end of this year when looking for money.

I just think each individual reporter is fearful of being too "skynews-ish", and are trying to be conservative, but this seems to be backfiring, and it often comes across as them twisting the truth a bit. In fairness to them, they do always report the full figures but they always seem to be hidden at the bottom of the article somewhere after they have put out their glowing headline.

thebman

zig wrote: »

Tbh, I dont think its an orders from upstairs scenario, although I did up to a few weeks/months ago, but just on further reflection I really cant see how that would be possible without threats from upstairs and subsequent whistleblowers, etc. I dont think there is any hidden agenda, but perhaps a more unspoken rule/culture in there. This may be down to something as simple as them hoping for a decent spending budget or something like that.

Fianna Fail are going to be gone soon so I doubt RTE feel any allegience to them, if anything they should be sucking up to FG/Lab now because that's who they'll be looking at the end of this year when looking for money.

I just think each individual reporter is fearful of being too "skynews-ish", and are trying to be conservative, but this seems to be backfiring, and it often comes across as them twisting the truth a bit. In fairness to them, they do always report the full figures but they always seem to be hidden at the bottom of the article somewhere after they have put out their glowing headline.

It is an unspoken rule culture. Look at the top presenters in RTE, most have one thing in common. Many come from or are directly related to a strong FF background in their families.

I think you'd have to be crazy to say there isn't a link. I don't think anybody walks into an office to an ordinary journalist in RTE and says that article is way too anti-government, rewrite it at once.

But RTE does have a reputation for hiring people known to the people in RTE through relatives etc... so a culture of mostly pro-FF/government people being hired is likely.

Will their support change with a change of the person paying the bills? Who knows. We could also see FG remove many of these people and start to try to put their own people in RTE.

I think its for that reason, it should be sold off TBH. We don't need a state broadcaster and such political fiddling or accusations of such will always hang over it as it doesn't have the good reputation of the BBC.

The government should really be in the business of looking after infrastructure not running companies and those companies should be part funding the investment in infrastructure.

The only thing such a policy needs is effective regulation on those companies which is what the existing government has a bad reputation on introducing and by that I mean catastrophically bad in almost every area. Ignore banking and look at the Advertising Authority, Comreg, Consumer Affairs etc... and we seem to have a bunch of consumer protection and regulatory bodies whose main goal is to not have to do anything at all unless something gets a bit too much public attention on Joe Duffy.

Oscail

Letter to Editor of Irish Times

Sir,

I refer to Editorial (17th December) thanking international bond trader, Michael Hasenstab, for buying up Irish government debt. Does Ireland's inferiority complex know no bounds? Once again we grovelingly defer and thank anybody who shows some interest in us. Mr. Hasenstab has one interest and one only, namely to maximise profits for his investors. In principle there is nothing wrong with this. The reason he purchased billions of Euros of Irish bonds is that he purchased them from panicked investors at massively discounted rates. Many of these investors were banks and pension funds who once Irish bonds were downgraded by the ratings agencies automatically had to sell them and because supply exceeded demand the price they had to offload them plummeted. Mr. Hasenstab purchased them at bargain basement prices. When these bonds mature the Irish government will purchase them back en masse from Mr. Hasenstab. The Government (aka the tax payer) will pay him the full original price and not the discounted price which he purchased them at, thereby generating millions of Euros in profit for his investors.

Given that the Irish government paid back holders of bank debt in full without a penny loss Mr. Hasenstab's risk in buying government bonds is minimal and has little to do with a confidence vote in Ireland. He knows full well that the Irish government is prepared to extract billions of Euros from its citizens to pay debts owed by its banks and as such it will do even more to pay back government debt.

Mr. Hasenstab's more recent purchase of Irish government debt was for one reason and one reason only, the interest rate offered by the Irish government was one of the highest returns available globally. These bonds, issued at very high interest rates, will be paid in full by the Irish tax payer and will result in millions of Euros profit for Mr. Hasenstab's clients. The real question to ask in order to determine Mr. Hasenstab's true confidence in Ireland is whether he would have bought the recent bonds if the interest rates were not set so high? Mr. Hasenstab has got the deal of the century by first of all purchasing Irish government debt at hugely discounted prices and for which the Irish tax payer will pay him back the much higher original price and secondly by buying recent government debt at one of the highest interest rates available anywhere in the world. Mr Hasenstab is an excellent bond trader who generates billions in profit for his clients. Groveling and misplaced gratitude by the Irish Times is, however, cringeworthy and embarrassing.

Yours etc,