Denis Hickie talks to Mediacontact.ie about politics, art and music

Dennis Hickey is certainly the thinking man (or wonman’s) rugby player and he poses interesting questions about the media and the independence of thought maintained by individual journalists. I think he’s right to flag up the dangers inherent in editorial polarisation within media organisations. This should always be on our radar.
Denis is also correct to raise the development of a very powerful right-wing US lobby in the shape of Fox as something that should be debated. That said, this merely reflects the polarisation of society and politics that now exists in the US generally and is therefore perhaps predictable and understandable. What Denis doesn’t state is the manner in which the media in western countries has historically been to the other end of the spectrum with at least a strong shade of liberal, left-wing bias. This was the case in the US where the media (and also Hollywood, where it persists) was to the left of overall society. No-one has spoken out much about this as a bias that was unfair. Perhaps the emergence of Fox is just the pendelum swinging back from the left (albeit a bit far to the right) befoe(hopefully)settling back towards the middle?

What Denis doesn’t comment on is the possibility of inbuilt bias in Irish media, where there is almost always overwhelming media consensus. Interestingly, it could be argued that Denis had a front-row seat for this when he publicly campaigned for the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. Almost all Irish news outlets were extremely pro-Lisbon in their editorialising and reporting and only one paper was really at odds with this. That media outlet, the Sunday Times, was accused of all sorts of evil doings as a consequence. Witch hunt might be too strong a word for it but the paper’s ownership by Rupert Murdock (yes, he of Fox) was raised and many suggested journalists in the paper were towing a line rather than seeking to responsibly balance a rather one-sided debate. I was pro-Lisbon myself but I welcomed the strong and persistent presentation of an alternative view. It made me think about my vote and question my rationale.

Denis’s closing comments on how journalists square their own personal views with a media organisation’s editorial approach are perhaps the most interesting and least debated. I worked for very many years as reporter for various newspapers, sometimes with Rupert Murdock-owned outlets, and I didn’t ever sense a controlling hand that alarmed my sense of fairness (and I reckon I’m a pretty liberal individual). I always thought a bigger potential danger was the degree of shared class, backgrounds, life experience and prejudices within newsrooms, and the potential unquestioning consensus this could instill. I worked on papers in the North too, where editorial views and readerships can be particularly politically polarised. Interestingly, despite all that, the journalists working in newsroom represented all sides and views, and they were able to get on with the job regardless.

It is alarming that, if Mr Love did indeed work for Rupert Murdoch owned newspapers, he never got around to spelling the propreitor’s name correctly