Fianna Fáil TD Timmy Dooley speaking outside Leinster House this morning
This morning.
Fianna Fáil’s communications spokesperson Timmy Dooley proposed the establishment of a Print Journalism Unit.
In a press release, he said:
“Quality journalism, the bedrock upon which people are informed in order to make decisions for themselves is currently jeopardised by a significant downturn in revenues for news publishers in Ireland. The figures are stark. National newspaper circulation is down 50% over the past 10 years, and down 35% for local newspapers.
“Fianna Fáil is proposing to expand the role of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and to establish a Print Journalism Unit. Its remit would be to deliver innovative schemes to support the work of print journalists at both national and local level. The unit will also disperse grant aid to support newspaper publishers in providing public service content.
“… Newspaper journalists research and fact check – this costs money. Those reusing their work must pay for that, otherwise we risk seeing newspapers go bust.
“The work of the Print Journalism Unit could be funded in two ways; by ring fencing current Exchequer VAT receipts from newspaper sales, c. €27 million or a new 6% digital advertising levy. Based on 2018 sales, it would realise c. €30 million per annum.”
FF proposes State intervention to secure future of quality journalism – Dooley (Fianna Fail)
Pic: Gavan Reilly
The Print Journalism Unit.
€30m to support print journalism. Not quality journalism.
Innovative thinking from Fianna Fáil.
wtf?!? do these politicians come with separate brain units?
so does that mean broadsheet is going to have to cough up to feature previously published articles? does that mean broadsheet in turn is going to charge us? so we’ll have to pay to read rotide’s comments?
It’s ok.. he’ll have to pay to make them..
Cu Cu
Lol
Don’t worry, my comments will remain free as long as Broadsheet continues as it is. Seeing as it’s not really traditional journalism and more of a blog.
Snob
Possibly, but a correct snob nonetheless
half correct
don’t get too fulla’yerself
Best gag ever on BS. in my time
Scooter ya lege
Scottser ya Lege
bit of a conflict of interest there with senator Clifford lee
I’m surprised Dimmy didn’t demand the relaunch of the Irish Press.
woooohhhhh
Timmy is pandering
Invest in print journalism heeem……………… now why is he trying to please and make friends in that community
c’mon spit it out
I’ll go first
Timmy is gearing up for sum’ting
and is just the lad to have a plan with Dev Eile
Cheezuz
this is turning out to be a great summer all the same
+1
I’d say he’s had a few nice lunches recently.
Maybe with a holiday thrown in ?
I’m astounded…
…personally…
No, I really am.
I’m indignated, for sure.
One of these days I’m going to get up off my couch, and eh…
One of these days.
Watch out.
This is a warning!
…but it’s a very comfortable couch…
I am also not going to do anything, but you probably already knew that.
– If you didn’t, welcome to The Internet.
Maybe the minister for lack of justice could take on the print media duties?
so .. FF want to fund newspapers. Yea, and FF wouldn’t be looking for anything in return, such as, controlling the content and tone of articles written, and painting FF in a positive light.
Print papers and magazines are subject to 9% vat rate. Not sure if that covers online subscription. Can’t ringfence a rate that’s getting the axe out to it in the next budget to finance a gigantic state spin and censorship unit.
Why in god’s name is Fianna Fail trying to get into bed with the Media by subsidizing or “protecting” them…What happens if they print a story of a back bencher getting into some scandal…would they scrap the idea? Delay payments based on stories they run? …I thought the whole idea of a Free press is exactly that!! Why can’t the paper chase the money themselves if this is an option?
We want independent quality journalism that we can mould independently and tell them to print our independent spin and not be printing mickey mouse anti-government stuff like scandals, backhanders, gravy trains, lifting pay caps for the boys, quangos, Redacted, mobile phones going missing and Leo’s speech gaffs.
We allow Facebook and Google to operate here tax free but we don’t like the way they disseminate ‘fake news’ (aka news we don’t agree with). So we spend €30million bolstering the traditional media (news we do like because we can manipulate it. Maurice McCabe).
all the while we live with a housing crisis a health crisis and a everyone is out of a job next March Brexit crisis.
is this the ultimate troll by Timmy. Fake news indeed.
worse than that
if ye take a full audit of whats already been paid out to the print media in “advertorials” on behalf of Strategic Government Communications and Bum-fluff
ye’ll find that they are already being well sub-vented
Good print journalism is being destroyed by stockholders and shareholders maximising profits through cutbacks and layoffs and outsourcing. This won;t address that, in fact, it will subsidise that activity. They could also try reforming ireland’s strict libel laws.
This is the most salient comment so far i think. Fully agree Nigel.
https://youtu.be/xSTN3mHEAOA
Nonsense.
Good print journalism is being destroyed because fewer people are getting their news from newspapers,preferring social media and the internet.
That’s why there are cutbacks and layoffs.It’s not the redundancies that are causing falling circulations.
Nobody with half a brain would believe anything they print.Most people under 50 get their news content from the internet where it’s not so easily controlled.Ollie Cromwell is right.This is happening all over the world.Is Timmy Dooley brain dead?
The problem with newspapers and to a degree the media in general is that they no longer report the news impartially.
Journalists view themselves as partisan whereas years ago whilst you had an idea of a newspaper’s political allegiances at least the coverage was across the board reflecting a wide range of opinions.
Not so today and it’s spreading into the rest of the media as well.
One small example – throughout RTE’s entire Brexit coverage and in particular that of their Brussel’s correspondent Tony Connolly there has never been anything other than an editorial line which mirrors that of the Irish government and the EU.
RTE is a little more than a government shill.
Such unquestioning journalism,born out of the incestuous relationship between RTE and the government of the day,is why corruption,graft and political incompetence have gone on unchecked in Irish politics for decades.
RTE is reluctant to bite the hand that feeds it.
But on a more prosaic level,newspaper are dying because it’s possible to read most of their coverage for free on the internet and it’s old news before it’s even been printed.
I have 30 newspapers and magazines in my Favourites folder from around the world and they’re all free or easily readable with a regular deletion of search history.
They include the Daily Mail,the first and most successful newspaper to actually make huge money from a free website.
The rest are still playing catch-up.
“Nobody with half a brain would believe anything they print.Most people under 50 get their news content from the internet”
And this is the problem with the world right here.
Lets not believe a story which has been fact checked and researched and edited under scrutiny. Let’s instead believe some randomers on twitter.
Idiots like you that write something like that without heavy qualification are the reason for things like Trump.
…doh…there was me thinking that crooked Hillary was the reason for Trump…
Proving his point, really.
You know nothing about me Rotide,and calling an idiot tells me all that I need to know about you.If you cannot see the incestuous relationship between government gardai and the media in Ireland then…Reading different views on sites such as this and many other websites gives a better understanding.But then I come across someone like you and feel disheartened.
Not bothering to invest in the evolution of the journalistic model as it shifted to online platforms, instead trying to maximise revenue via advertising or clickbait or selling user data, is part of the same pattern.
Another subsidy for [he who must not be named].
This is my only problem with this measure. I actually think they do need to be supported, but himself has taken enough from the state without being subsidised further to have his papers tell us he did nothing wrong.
Interestingly enough, I was thinking about paying and print journalism today. There was a certain writer in the Irish Times who called people who didn’t watch “Love Island” “boring pseudo-intellectuals”, and I thought I’d pay a small fee to have that author out of the print media industry. And the editor who greenlit that piece of garbage as well.
Hey Jennifer? Write something stupid about Love Island that will work as click-bait. Also, spell mould incorrectly to add insult to injury.
The Irish Times is a dreadful newspaper with the dullest set of writers I’ve ever seen brought together under one masthead.
The Brexit coverage is appallingly one-sided and it’s no surprise that its sister newspaper in the UK is The Guardian whose parent company is offshore to avoid tax and spends its time lambasting companies and individuals for avoiding tax.
There’s no bigger hypocrite than a social hypocrite.
They do however write about a number of other things that are completely unrelated to Brexit.
Unlike you.
So there’s that.
So if you were to write a pro Brexit piece in The Irish Times Oille, what would be the main points you would sell to an Irish readership?
It’s not their job to sell Brexit in the same way it’s not their job to oppose it.
Their job is to report and reflect on both sides of the debate.
Which they clearly don’t.
Hence an echo chamber.
Ah so they report stuff that reflects badly on Brexit so obviously they’re anti-Brexit which means you’ll probably smear them as anti-British too. You’re a propagandist, Ollie. Objective reporting is your arch-enemy.
Quite happy for them to report on the downsides of Brexit old sport but there are upsides too and a not insignificant number of people in Ireland who are not in favour of remaining in the EU.
And anti-British ? More like anti-English.Some of their coverage and commentary has been blatantly racist.
If similar things had been written about the Irish in the British media Fintan O’Toole – responsible for some of the worst elements – would have been leading the howls of outrage.
Ah Fintan,the brave boy urging the Irish to rebel against the evil EU and burn the bondholders is now the chief apologist for Druncker,Barnier and the rest.
You couldn’t make it up – except he does.
Well, there are the upsides you claim, but they’re hard;y newsworthy when the events of the day suggest nothing but disarray and infighting amongst the Tories and serious electoral malfeasance by the Leave campaign. Can’t be repeating your chirpy PR spin every day, can they?
None of their coverage has been blatantly racist. You’ve been claiming racism to justify your own racism for a while now. It’s transparently cynical, like the rest of your schtick.
What a joke. Print media is destined to go away, nothing will revive it. Waste of time and money.
Another pointless quango funded by the taxpayer and stuffed with the unemployable for life. Oh goody.
just when you think they can’t possibly do anything worse then all they have done they come out with this. time to drain the swamp and remove the filth. FF are going to suffer losses similar to the last great purge in 2011. I can’t wait to watch those fancy charts on RTE election results coverage showing them dip way down in the negative direction
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jul/21/los-angeles-times-new-owner-patrick-soon-shiong-interview
I always find it funny when articles like this come up that the usual suspects line up to pronounce print media dead are exactly the same suspsects that fall over themselves to congratulate broadsheet on articles that are literally compiled from existing newspaper articles.
ah stop would ya
go off there and tell us how RTE and the Print Media actually fact check anything
or look to apply balance
Main Stream Media Journalism has failed
because people don’t trust it
Additionally Print media is dying because people don’t want to buy, like pay for, something they don’t trust; like a loop-the-loop past its sell by. And as the population ages there is less and less need for paper format anything.
Yup.
You have your finger on the G-spot there.
“go off there and tell us how RTE and the Print Media actually fact check anything”
That would be all the ‘reporters’ and ‘editors’ and ‘researchers’ they employ which provide such things and prevent them from getting sued every single day (Of course , there’s no stopping some people)
Tell me how you fact check twitter and broadsheet? You don’t . You do exactly the same thing as you do when you read a newspaper. You either agree with it or you don’t. The difference is that newspapers and RTE provide editorial analysis and broadsheet doesn’t. Newspapers and RTE provide actual news, broadsheet provides informations about current happenings that may (but mostly aren’t) be relevant to large sections of the populace and for the most part if looks like the researching of submitted articles consists of checking the email address
“or look to apply balance”
When they had to apply balance on RTE for the referenda, yis went doolaly
Look bottom line is that ‘people don’t trust MSM’ is complete f&*king rubbish as you can see EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. there is a primetime report that causes a stir. Suddenly EVERYONE was watching RTE that night and everyone pretty much takes it at face value.
Yup.
RTE really put it up to the politicians and developers who caused the property crash didn’t they.
Look how many of them had their collars felt … oh,wait a minute.
Well that was a mouthful Rottie
Give over
I don’t have’ta pay Broadsheet or Twitter
And neither retain the usual set of self-serving self-indulgent pals to rotate on a loop and call it current affairs news or entertainment
And don’t you dare try and tell me Prime Time don’t pick and choose to taste and serve special interests, or take care of people on it
An’ c’mere, if all these Main Stream household name set ups are all that, with their professional fact checking and balance and journalism; then tell me this, how the púc are so many of them in that game related?
And not a mention of a Conflict of Interest register t’ be seen anywhere
F’sake
You’d give a statue ire
If stuff was quality and reliable newspapers would figure out a way to survive
Fact is they have nothing worth the effort
RTE etc don’t factcheck > evidence http://dublinstreams.blogspot.com/2017/08/if-genuine-news-orgs-dont-address-or.html
Existing newspaper articles that are invariably stolen from social media sources in the first place. Including Broadsheet. Most of the references of the “usual suspects” to these so-called newspaper articles are not falling over with praise. But the contrary, pointing out the hypocrisy, selective reporting, and utter propaganda and commercial porn pukebag contents that gets served up as “facts” and “news”
Flogging a dead horse, papers thought the switch to digital would be easy, but it’s a very different user experience and people just don’t enjoy it the same, however the advertisers have jumped ship for the most part.
So we the tax payers pay to be told lies much like the discredited communications unit Leo tried to pull on us. I don’t think so DearxTimmy.
#printisdead