Shock to the system? Journalism in Irish public service media after the crash

Abstract

The political and economic disjunctures associated with the 2008 financial crisis and the policy responses to it have coincided with the deepening of professional journalism’s cultural crisis of authority and legitimacy, associated with declining public confidence in the hegemonic norms underpinning journalism practice. This paper presents the findings of research undertaken in the newsroom of Ireland’s main public service media organisation aimed at exploring the durability of key tenets of journalistic professionalism as its practitioners negotiated the crisis. In demonstrating evidence from interview testimony of limited editorial responses to crisis, enduring support for dominant professional norms and prevailing practices of representation, inclusion and participation, the findings are suggestive of a broad normative resilience in the face of crisis. Such stability, it is argued, reflects the ideological enmeshment of public service media and journalistic professionalism within the political and cultural systems of their host states but offers few resources for extricating public service journalism from deepening professional and institutional cultural crises.

Platforms, people and politics: The challenges for public service media in Ireland

“…Hanretty, 2011) in the coming years. Instead, the relationship of Irish PSMs 'with their political masters is a normal one' (P5), and independence works mostly well in theory and in practice (though there is criticism of this from within RTÉ itself) (Cullinane, 2020). For example, Cullinane (2020: 125) found respondents who worked at the broadcaster argued that there was 'enhanced journalistic caution' RTÉ, with one of the journalists at RTÉ stating that 'external political "pressures" [are] "quite significant"' (as cited in Cullinane, 2020: 125).…”