Editors and journalists discuss cross-border news coverage

Editors and journalists have gathered in Dublin to discuss the extent of cross-border news coverage provided on the island of Ireland.

The event in the Convention Centre was the latest dialogue facilitated through the Government’s Shared Island initiative.

The discussions, which also featured academics, trade unionists and civic society representatives, examined media representation across the island and also the potential for deeper cross-border networks and collaboration in news and other media.

Ireland’s press ombudsman Susan McKay said while the island boasted excellent media outlets north and south, she highlighted a tendency for organisations to limit coverage to the jurisdiction in which they are based.

“We have excellent media north and south of the border,” she said.

“But partition is very much reflected in the media in this country for a range of reasons, some of them very understandable, some of them less so, some of them more complicated and less well examined.”

She said the border region was “uniquely disadvantaged” by the reluctance of some outlets to cover the neighbouring jurisdiction.

“They don’t cross the border or, if they do, it’s in a very occasional or featurey sort of way,” she said.

“So, people in the border area who require to know what’s happening on both sides of the border are somewhat left out.”

Deirdre McCarthy, the director of news and current affairs at RTE, said Ireland’s national broadcaster viewed coverage of Northern Ireland as a “huge priority”.

“RTE is an all-island broadcaster and that’s how we approach our news and current affairs,” she said.

Ms McCarthy added: “I would argue that the interest in stories on Northern Ireland is huge and has been growing big time, enormously, certainly in the last five to 10 years.”

Pat Leahy, political editor of the Irish Times, told the event the paper had a “long commitment” to covering all parts of the island.

He said while there was a long-standing perception that reader interest in stories from Northern Ireland was “not strong”, a recent series by the paper on societal attitudes north and south had proved very popular.

“I think that there is interest in these stories when they are approached in the right way,” he said.

Noel Doran, editor of the Irish News, Northern Ireland’s only nationalist aligned daily paper, said its readers were always keen on news from south of the border.

“There is an enormous appetite there certainly from our readers for southern coverage,” he said.

“We would maybe suspect there’s not quite the enthusiasm in the other direction over the years.”

Ben Lowry, editor of the pro-unionist News Letter in Northern Ireland, said the paper’s coverage of last year’s Creeslough explosion tragedy in Co Donegal was an example of it giving significant prominence to a cross-border story.

However, he said the paper was, in the main, only interested in human interest stories in the Republic of Ireland and not political developments from Dublin.

“We’re not generally very interested in what happens between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail except insofar as it relates to Northern Ireland,” he said.

Steven McCaffrey, from the Social Change Initiative NGO, highlighted a lack of diversity both within newsrooms and in news output in Northern Ireland as a concern.

“Black and minority ethnic communities in Northern Ireland say that they are invisible in the media,” he told the event.

“They’re not in newsrooms, newsrooms are not diverse. But I think what’s more of a problem is they’re not seeing themselves in the output, which is more problematic and harder to explain away.”