CONNECT: Rupert Murdoch has said he uses sport as a ' battering ram' to get into new markets - and the Sky deal with the FAI means he is now better positioned than ever to attack the Irish market. The threat of his brand of 'multinational slick' ought to worry all indigenous news and media outfits
'This is," says the New York Review of Books, "journalism's age of melancholy." Certainly, to judge by the tone of recent books about US journalism, the news about the news is gloomy. Then again, it's hardly news that so much US journalism is being debased by bean-counting managements desperate to squeeze profits out of newspapers and TV news operations. We've seen the tawdriness for years now and heard all the guff about "giving the punters what they want".
It was codology, of course, cynical codology. "Giving the punters what they want" was really code for giving the shareholders what they want.
The deal was this: bombard the punters with cheap, prurient, sensationalised "scandal" about sex or celebrities (preferably both) and inevitably they'll get addicted. Like junk food, junk journalism can be tasty and has its time and place. But living on junk food only, or even excessively, is bad for your health. It's precisely the same with junk journalism.
Americans are among the worst-informed people in the wealthy world. They really are. This is tragic because US journalism has often been the world's best. Its resources and the First Amendment's guarantee that Congress can't pass any law interfering with free speech, or a free press, ensured it could be. No doubt, US journalism can still, at times, be superb. But the big picture is depressing and Ireland appears intent on distorting its media to conform to the gloomy news from the US.
The political shafting of RTÉ, for instance, now makes the Government look not only cheap and spiteful but idiotic too. In the mid-1990s, Rupert Murdoch called sport a "battering ram" for entry into new markets. Impoverished by a government slavishly eulogising the wonderful world of market economics that has given us Enron, Andersen and WorldCom, RTÉ could not withstand Murdoch. He bought the FAI - and at a knockdown price - and his battering ram for Ireland is now positioned better than ever.
This ought to worry all of the indigenous news and media outfits - even the cannibals urging the dismemberment and ruin of RTÉ - because Murdoch's battering ram likes to batter all opposition. Given its resources, it can batter most.
Sport, produced by players, managers and fans and therefore relatively inexpensive to a broadcaster, is best watched live. Primarily aimed at men in the prime of life (the viewers with the plumpest wallets!), it is one of the few kinds of programming people will pay to watch.
But televised sport is just one element in Murdoch's bid for world media dominance. If that makes him sound like an improbable Bond villain, remember that his News Corporation targets other areas of TV, notably news and films, as well as owning newspapers, magazines and book publishers.
His different media interests are incessantly and effectively used for cross promotional purposes. His power is such that he has already set a style for journalism - "multinational slick" - in tone and content.
Like junk journalism, a little of which can be enjoyable and enlivening, the "multinational slick" journalism of Sky News has merits too. It's quick and snappy and often television's best for breaking stories. Its typical male and female presenting duos are straight from faux-folksy US regional TV. Its technology and use of logos, split-screens and scroll bars can be innovative. Yet, the look and feel of Sky News is television journalism's equivalent of the look and feel of a multinational hotel chain. It's functional but there is something human missing.
Indeed, Sky seems to realise this and sometimes tries to compensate. However, small-talk between the newsreaders, for instance, emphasises rather than dilutes the feeling that something human is lacking. Perhaps it's the factory nature of it all.
The channel seems like a news factory with a showroom out front, a place that prizes process at least as much as raw material. It sells hard and the fact that it's a dedicated news channel probably accentuates its manufacturing feel.
Still, it represents the mainstream future. It's true too that reminiscences about grand old days or a bygone golden age are seldom more than sentimental slush. Yet the Murdoch deal with the FAI, in so far as it affects Ireland so directly, is a seismic shift from the past. It marks the moment when global commercial media has been able to buy an aspect of popular Irish identity - the Irish international football team.
Global commercial media, such as Sky, CNN, Disney and others, are propagandists for globalisation as well as being examples of the process. Their very style and content are a potent form of advertising. Hence the relentless tone of a sales-pitch. It is, after all, laced through such media because one of the things they sell is selling itself. Given that conventional state-owned media regularly sold the idea of the state, you could hardly expect anything different from the commercial giants.
Anyway, political opposition to or control of global commercial media seems negligible. It's often said that some of the biggest players, Murdoch among them, curry influence with politicians worldwide.
Certainly, it could be politically risky to oppose too vigorously such powerful media outfits. So the process proceeds relentlessly and in spite of what many of its apologists have promised, the global market system and its proselytising commercial media have not brought about a liberal democratic utopia.
A century ago, Irish journalism meant print journalism only. Nonetheless, with the tensions of the Revival period generating fraught and polarised opinions across a range of subjects, Irish journalism was dynamic. Decolonisation and its dangers, benefits and implications, gave rise to heated political and cultural debates. The meanings and roles of states and nations were at the heart of much of the argument and rancour. We know what's happened since.
The meanings and roles of states and nations ought to be at the heart of the Sky/FAI/RTÉ mess. The team in question is, after all, one which represents the state of the Republic of Ireland and is supported by many people with cultural and historical allegiances to the notion of an extended Irish nation. Yet money is severing links between the team and its identity. The deal with Sky asserts that cash is more important than country. Still, questions remain: who really owns Irish football - the people of Ireland or the FAI?; if the team plays in the name of the state why should a commercial broadcaster be able to own the rights to show it playing?; what, if anything, can politicians do now?
There is a dark irony to it all of course. The suits who refer to this State as "Ireland Inc", as though one of the oldest civilisations in Europe is a mere commercial corporation, have a team to follow now.
It may indeed be US journalism's age of melancholy. If it is, the reasons are clear. The pursuit of profit, a reasonable and necessary activity, became rabid and deranged. Indeed, it could be world media's age of melancholy - despite magnificent technology, the gloomy truth is that the most profitable stuff is inevitably a version of McMedia. It can't last for ever but real political control of rabid economics is overdue. The foaming mouths are infecting and gobbling up everything.