Voices in the crisis: The role of media elites in interpreting Ireland’s banking collapse

Abstract

This article focuses on the experts chosen as sources in radio news coverage at the start of Ireland’s financial crisis in 2008. The study examines which source categories were afforded opportunities to discuss this major international news story at the start of the European financial crisis. Access to these news programmes allows guests to shape public discourse, while the range of voices influences the character of wider policy debate. We find an elite-orientated coverage with official sources having strongest access in the 3-month period after the announcement of the controversial bank guarantee. While there was a marked business elite focus in sources selected, we also find strong evidence of ‘interpretative journalism’ in the presence of reporters as programme guests. There was a very clear gender bias. The results raise important issues about the nature of democratic debate in a mediated political environment as the selection of a narrow range of voices limits alternative perspectives in public debate.

Keywords

Economic crisis journalism media sources pundits

Introduction

Free and open public debate is a core component of democratic politics. In accepting that the media is crucial to public discourse, it is important to understand more about the media’s impact on policy formation debate, and crucially ‘to determine who controls public policy debates’ (Callaghan and Schnell, 2001: 184). In this study, we are interested in knowing who were the commentators used by the news media to interpret and explain a policy matter of national and international importance.

The Irish bank guarantee in September 2008 was a significant milestone in the timeline of the global financial crisis. The decision to guarantee the deposits and debts of six Irish-owned banks to the tune of €400b – later extended to €485b to cover foreign-owned banks with significant operations in Ireland – came at a key moment in the international crisis. The unilateral measure was met with considerable criticism from Ireland’s European Union partners. It was politely described by the Spanish Economy Minister as causing ‘quite a deal of irritation’ (Seib and Sharrock, 2008), while the British Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted the move caused ‘disarray for everyone else in Europe’ (Darling, 2011: 1).

This study examines source access on two leading radio news programmes in the 3 months after the guarantee was introduced. The role of programme-makers as gatekeepers of policy information is investigated by focusing on the experts who, through their access to the airwaves, can influence public opinion. By being invited to programmes to articulate specific viewpoints, these experts receive mass exposure and potentially have the opportunity to control how wider debate is framed. In determining programme schedules and making editorial choices, the media has the ability to promote and to relegate policy information and alternatives available to the public. In their daily decision-making, these programme-makers have ‘a tremendous influence over the flow and shape of policy debates’ (Callaghan and Schnell, 2001: 186). In the following sections, the main literature relevant to this study is examined, the methodology used is explained and the findings are discussed.

Talk radio, pundits and financial journalism

In a broadcast environment, programme guests provide content. They fill news holes, offer interpretation and deliver drama and conflict. They also provide issue balance in a regulatory environment requiring impartiality in news and current affairs output. In deciding to invite a guest from one organisation or viewpoint to be interviewed over somebody representing an alternative viewpoint, programme-makers are essentially deciding to cover one aspect of a topic or allocating more coverage to one issue over another. Decisions about who is invited to programmes are motivated by different factors understood as ‘taxonomies of news values’ underpinned by properties such as drama, unexpectedness and resources (Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Gans, 1980; Harcup and O’Neill, 2001).

Studies have shown that the broadcast news media tends to use ‘a narrow set of elite voices’ (Hoynes, 2002: 41). There is a strong tendency to favour those with governmental or ‘official’ status. In this scenario, it is not then surprising that news programmes are elite-centred. Explanations for source selection based on editorial time pressure are weaker with a news story that runs over several days or weeks. For example, the continuous nature of the financial crisis – notwithstanding fresh daily developments – provided room for programme-makers to be more reflective in guest selection.

An appearance on a radio or television programme by itself will not secure agreement for a particular point of view but having access undoubtedly helps to increase visibility on a particular issue. Where individuals who share similar ideological or political perspectives are given preferential access, there exists a potential to generate momentum in securing public, and wider political elite, support for a specific stance. In this regard, the prioritisation of certain voices over others can narrow the terms of public debate whereas quality discourse on news media programmes would, by one definition, seek to include ‘a wide range of critical voices in terms of guests’ (Stevenson, 2010: 857).

Such sources are more frequently cited in news stories today than previously (Albaek, 2011: 337), while their ‘sheer number’ has significantly increased (Nimmo and Combs, 1992: 42), facilitated by broadcast market changes. The number of broadcast hours devoted to news and current affairs programmes has ‘expanded substantially’ (Norris, 2000: 104), and, in the case of Ireland, this trend has been facilitated by a deregulation of the broadcast market post-1989 with more licensed television and radio stations. With more talk, programming to fill the market for these media sources, or pundits, has increased.

In the first instance, they can be seen as ‘someone of great learning with the authority to give opinions’ (Salwen, 2000: 162). Their selling points are credibility and authority (Figueiras, 2011; Nimmo and Combs, 1992). Presented to the audience as authoritative sources, they provide background and contextualise information. We have also seen the emergence of a second category of broadcast interview guest – the star or celebrity pundits who are defined less by their expertise on a particular topic and who are favoured by programme-makers for their ability to engage in speculation and conjecture, and engage in ‘provocative, [and] deliberately inflammatory expressions of opinion’ (McNair, 2000: 65).

A third category of pundit is the ‘journalist expert’. Previous studies have commented on the movement from descriptive journalism where the reporter is an observer to interpretative reporting where the reporter operates as an analyst (McNair, 2000; Patterson, 2000). These journalists supplement factual reporting with what has been described as ‘interpretative reportage’ (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2001: 174) or ‘contextual reporting’ (Fink and Schudson, 2014: 1). These reporters do not just deliver factual information but are also called upon to provide ‘a mixture of analysis, opinion, speculation and judgment’ (Marriott, 2007: 699). This change in news reporting has increased the treatment of journalists as ‘pseudo experts’ who assist in interpretation and explaining the news. The merits or otherwise of interpretive reporting have been widely debated alongside the movement in reporting beyond contextualisation to opinionated journalism which is most pronounced in the United States where one study estimated that stories including journalistic opinions were as high as 82% on Fox News (Cushion, 2012: 101).

Even in broadcast systems where the news principles of objectivity and balance are still strongly applied – and governed by law – the demands on journalists to provide context and to interpret stories for the audience exist, and these demands are more prevalent with complex stories such as those involving financial matters. The nature of business news – ‘with its complexities and obscure language’ – is often difficult to understand for a general audience (Schifferes and Coulter, 2013: 20). Financial, business and economic stories are generally interpreted in the media by non-journalistic experts and journalists covering these specialised beats. Debate is ongoing as to how well the media fulfilled its role in holding financial elites to account in the period leading up to the financial crisis. Financial journalists have been strongly criticised and have also engaged in a degree of self-criticism – for their failure to report the banking crisis in advance (Doyle, 2006; Schifferes and Coulter, 2013; Starkman, 2009; Tambini, 2010). In the sections that follow, we examine from what perspective the first major event of the Irish banking crisis was discussed by media sources selected by two leading news programmes.

Methodology

Our sample included all interviews related to the banking and economic crisis on two national morning radio news programmes, Morning Ireland (7 a.m.–9 a.m., weekdays) which airs on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), the state-owned public broadcaster, and Breakfast (6:30 a.m.–9 a.m. weekdays), which is transmitted on the privately owned, Newstalk. Both programmes are regulated by a national broadcasting body and have to adhere to the same editorial codes in terms of impartiality and fairness in news and current affairs content. They have similar structures – and are each fronted by two presenters – although Morning Ireland is more formal in presentation style. They have a combined audience of almost 600,000 people (Table 1).

Table 1.

Morning radio news programmes (adults, aged 15+).

Station	Ownership	Programme	Time	Audience (000)	Average programme reach
RTÉ	Public	Morning Ireland	7 a.m.–9 a.m.	446,000	13%
Newstalk	Private	Breakfast	6:30 a.m.–9 a.m.	133,000	4%

RTÉ: Raidió Teilifís Éireann.

Source: JNLR/Ipsos MRBI, 2008.

News of the bank guarantee emerged overnight on 30 September 2008, so for most people the first mention of the dramatic policy decision came on these two programmes. We examined the news coverage in the period from 30 September to 24 December 2008. This time period included the first coverage of the €400b guarantee as well as related domestic events including the introduction of an emergency budget to cut public sector pay and increase taxation (14 October 2008); the announcement of a 34% fall in half-year earnings and cancellation of shareholder dividends at the country’s largest financial institution, Bank of Ireland (13 November 2008); and confirmation of the first in a series of multi-billion euro bailouts for Ireland’s banks (21 December 2008).

Details of guests on Morning Ireland were obtained from the programme’s web site through analysis of individual web pages for each broadcast day. This level of detail was not available online for Breakfast but the author was provided with access to the programme’s internal logs. The latter information was obtained during an onsite visit to Newstalk’s newsroom in Dublin.

During the 3-month period, there were 294 source interviews on 208 programmes. The higher number on Breakfast (167) against Morning Ireland (127) can be attributed to its longer time slot, 30 minutes each weekday. The sample included one-to-one and panel interviews. The majority of interviews involved a single guest – either in studio or on phone – being interviewed by a single presenter. These interviews varied in duration but all featured in the main body of the programmes. Material from the dedicated business segments on the two programmes was not included as this material tends to be targeted at a specialised business audience rather than a general audience interested in news. All sources were categorised by their main group professional identification.

Findings and discussion

Official elite sources

The results show that the experts selected to interpret and explain the Irish financial and banking crisis in late 2008 were predominately journalists, politicians and representatives of city interests and business groups. We find an elite-orientated coverage, with official sources having strongest access to the airwaves in the 3-month period after the announcement of the guarantee. As indicated in Figure 1, journalists (36.3%) were the main sources used on both programmes. Politicians (22.8%) dominated the non-journalist categories followed by those directly linked to the world of business (city/financial experts, 18.7%; business group representatives, 4.4%).

Figure 1.

All sources, 30 September 2008 to 24 December 2008.

The voices of academics were heard (11.6%) frequently. Their apparent strength for the broadcaster is their perceived neutrality and their factual expert knowledge (Albaek, 2011: 338). They also offer editorial decision-makers balance in broadcast coverage but, as has been noted previously, the political persuasions of academics are rarely revealed for audiences (Nimmo and Combs, 1992: 116). Moreover, specific to studies of source selection on a finance story, it has been argued that the dominant perspective of relevant academics would lean towards the business world (Berry, 2013).

Representatives of consumer groups (less than 1%) and trade unions (3%) had limited access. A study of US news coverage of the Greek financial crisis found similar narrow coverage, with workers and union leaders poorly represented (Tracy, 2012: 519). Overall, the Irish case is similar to the main British national morning radio news programme in a 6-week period in late 2008 where the parameters of the debate were also set by a narrow group of media sources (Berry, 2013: 14).

Previous studies have found that the news media gravitates towards status quo positions and that protest challenges tend to be marginalised in news coverage (Weaver and Scacco, 2013). We find support for this argument with a complete absence of ‘alternative’ voices and opinions. An examination of the political sources reveals a preference for guests from the main ‘establishment’ parties in government and opposition. Of the politicians used as media sources in the 3-month period to 24 December 2008, the overwhelming majority (72%) were from parties that supported the introduction of the bank guarantee. The limited political perspective offered to the public is evident in the near-total absence of voices from ‘anti-establishment’ parties.

Previous research has also shown an overwhelming male bias in news sources (Hoynes, 2002) and among media pundits (Figueiras, 2011). In an Irish context, studies have shown a pattern of gender discrimination on radio programme panels (National Women’s Council of Ireland, 2012). The results in this study are even more dramatic. Even allowing for an argument that the world of business is male dominated, a striking 92% of guests were male; 8% were female. The near-total absence of female voices points to a significant failure by the editorial decision-makers on the two programmes included in this study.

City voices

The voices of the business community were heard frequently in the 3-month period after the bank guarantee was announced. In many respects, this is not surprising given editorial decision-makers’ need for sources to explain and interpret a complex financial story to a general audience. City and business representatives comprised 23% of all sources. In a study of media sources on the BBC’s Today radio programme, Berry (2013) found that city/financial sources (35.1%) were the largest group. In both cases, it is highly likely that the dominance of these sources was actually underestimated. First, the views of many academics and politicians selected as sources would have coincided with the perspectives offered by business representative sources. Second, it is likely that the contributions of financial journalists would have further augmented the strength of voices from this particular point of view.

Of those journalists included in this study, finance or business was the dominant journalistic beat (57%) against political (21.5%) and foreign-based (21.5%). It has been argued that financial journalists and their sources enjoy a synergy of viewpoints, sharing ‘a set of assumptions about the nature of the political and economic world that were profoundly ideological’ (Manning, 2013: 186). The tendency is for financial journalists to espouse free market perspectives (Doyle, 2006). In an Irish context, Fahy et al. (2010) concluded that during the economic boom (1997–2008) Irish business journalists ‘essentially became advocates’ for bankers and property developers so as to maintain source access (p. 13).

Interpretative journalism

We find support for the thesis that contemporary news journalism supplements factual reporting with on-air contributions that provide interpretation and context. One in three of all sources were journalists. The rationale for having journalists as interview guests is explained not just by the fact that they can bring an audience ‘up-to-date’ with a breaking story but also because they can provide context for these news developments. In this regard, they fulfil the role of ‘sense-makers’ (McNair, 2000: 75) although this activity potentially conflicts with their role as providers of factual news.

As shown in Figure 2, there was a strong preference for journalists based in Ireland in explaining this financial crisis story. This may reflect a caution by programme decision-makers in that they expect journalists as experts to provide balanced analysis against other experts who may have strong views either way on the crisis. Moreover, the high number of ‘in-house’ journalists used as experts by both stations may confirm this preference – journalists are used to interpret and contextualise but they offer more balance than non-journalists as experts, while in-house journalists potentially offer more balance again. The better-resourced RTÉ tended to favour its own reporting staff – including its correspondents based in Brussels, London and Washington – while Newstalk, which showed a very strong preference for print journalists working for Irish newspapers, was heavily reliant for its media sources on Irish Times journalists.

Figure 2.

Journalist sources, 30 September 2008 to 24 December 2008 (N = 107).

Differences in public versus private ownership

The data generated also allowed for direct comparison of the different treatment of this news story by different programmes, one originating from a state-owned public broadcaster, the other from a privately owned media outlet. A number of interesting findings emerged from a comparison by ownership type. Both programmes favoured journalists as their primary interview source with relatively similar figures for the dominance of journalists (39% on public against 34% on private). These data provide further strong supporting evidence for the presence of interpretative or contextualised journalism and show it is not, at least in this study, determined by ownership type. Beyond a preference for journalists as experts we see interesting divergences in editorial choice in sources selection. In Table 2, the main source categories are ranked for both programmes, which clearly shows the dominance of official elite experts but with a much stronger preference for city and business group sources on the private station (32%) than on its publicly owned rival (12%). The public programme (28%) was more heavily reliant on politicians as sources than the private programme (19%). In terms of the politician sources, we found that the private programme had a higher preference for those who backed the guarantee (78%), than did the public programme (67%).

Table 2.

Main media sources by rank order, (% of total sources).

Professional category	Overall rank	Publicly owned programme rank	Privately owned programme rank
Journalist	1 (36%)	1 (39%)	1 (34%)
City/business	2 (24%)	4 (12%)	2 (32%)
Politician	3 (23%)	2 (28%)	3 (19%)
Academic	4 (12%)	3 (16%)	4 (8%)

The public programme’s greater reliance on academics and politicians may suggest a stronger adherence to the need to display independence and balance. City and business representative sources would be expected to adopt more fixed views, so the prioritisation of other expert sources may reflect a desire to ensure more balance and impartial coverage on the public station. While the private station also had to adhere to regulatory rules requiring balance, its ownership profile may influence its desire for more voices from the private sector.

Overall, we found that the public service programme was male, elite dominated but with a stronger preference for politicians and academics as sources over city and business representatives, and among the journalists used to contextualise and interpret the story, it drew heavily on its own staff. Similarly, the private programme was also male, elite dominated but its editorial decision-makers strongly favoured business group representatives as sources and drew heavily on print journalists to explain the financial crisis to its audience. In the case of both programmes, there was little, if any, space for female voices or for those sources who might have offered an alternative narrative. While we found evidence of divergent editorial decision-making that may – subject to further analysis – be attributed to the ownership type, we also found considerable official elite source dominance on both programmes.

Conclusion

This study examined the source categories that were afforded opportunities to discuss and debate the consequences of a significant public policy decision. These sources were given an opportunity to advance their positions and viewpoints to shape and influence public attitudes. In terms of ensuring a vibrant public sphere, it is important that a range of voices are heard to ensure ‘a deeper, more deliberative, and wide-ranging public discussion about the issues of the day’ (Hoynes, 2002: 37). The presence of a diverse range of voices not only offers the prospect for more robust critiques of issues but also allows alternative scenarios and policy choices to be aired. More specifically, news organisations underpinned by a public service ethos are expected to provide access to groups and viewpoints that would otherwise be unheard.

So did programme-decision makers meet these standards? We found that the banking crisis story was overwhelmingly reflected through the views of official sources. The views of journalists (and specifically business journalists), pro-guarantee politicians, city and business group representatives dominated the airwaves. Experts invited on the two programmes were also overwhelmingly male. We also found that interviewees had a domestic rather than an international focus in that some 78% of guests could be classified as ‘Irish-based’ as against 22% from outside Ireland.

These findings concur with previous research about the dominance of official sources, and – specifically in relation to media coverage of financial stories – the dominance of elite business sources. Both the public programme and the private programme drew on a limited range of official sources and offered their listeners a narrow insider perspective on a story of national and international significance. The narrow range of voices limited alternative perspectives in public debate, and raises important issues about how the media performs its democratic role.

Much has been written about the performance of journalism in the period prior to the financial collapse, but as this study shows, there is a great deal to be understood about how the media has covered the crash itself. With more awareness of the outcome of source selection, it should be possible to alert editorial decision-makers to the consequences of their choices, and to identity ways to address the type of source imbalances raised in this article. Further research could examine the motivations and outcomes of the strong attachment for journalists as experts, and test whether differences in emphasis emerge in a comparative analysis of on-air contributions of different journalist beats.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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