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Profs Into People: Dr. Thomas Taaffe, Professor of Anthropology - The media in Northern Ireland

A) I was working on my PhD dissertation that was entitled, "Good Fridays, Celtic Tigers, and the Drum Cree Parade: Media, Politics, and the State in Northern Ireland."

Q) In Science of Society class you said that you were "chasing the media." Can you clarify what you were actually doing.

A) I'm an anthropologist. The primary method for anthropological research is ethnography. We immerse ourselves in a culture, 'do what the locals do', participate in the life of the culture we are working in and report what we find. My ethnographic world was full of politicians and reporters. So I immersed myself in that world, traveled with the press as they did their work, observed the same events that they did and interviewed the people that they interviewed.

I have a minor background as a reporter and an editor, so I was already familiar with some of the demands and expectations of journalism and I come from an Irish family that played a significant role in Irish history. My parents were both Irish scholars, as was my grandfather on my father's side. So while I was working in a landscape far from the NYC streets I grew up on, I had a deep cultural and historical foundation to do my work.

I joined the press pool and the political class, with the assistance of the Women's Coalition (a minor cross-community party in NI) -- by gaining access to the NI peace talks. I traveled with the press -- or various members of the press -- as they covered all the significant events in NI.

After a month or so, the Northern Irish Office (NIO, the governing administration that oversees NI affairs) told me I would need to be 'vetted' -- that is, have security run a background check on me to be sure I didn't present a threat -- in order to attend meetings and press conferences that involved British national officials. I submitted my academic credentials, explained the purpose of my research and I was checked out by British Intelligence (MI5 handles vetting for the NIO). Several weeks later, I was cleared to attend governmental press conferences and other events and they added me to the list of people who received daily press releases. Between official notification by the government, political parties, community groups and the advice of reporters, I kept abreast of where the press were heading next.

The 'events' that we attended ranged from peace talks, election counts, press conferences, political protests, riots, and week-long assaults on communities. To some degree, I used my own instincts for a story to help me decide what I should be doing next. In some cases, every reporter was going to the same place and I just followed them there.

In terms of research, I observed media-political interactions and the ways that the press constructed their stories. I interviewed reporters, editors, producers, politicians, government bureaucrats and those who were the subjects of news stories. I interviewed Protestant and Catholic paramilitary members and spent time on both neighborhoods with them, getting to know their political perspectives and why they fought the war. I also investigated the economic and material conditions in NI, particularly in those communities where paramilitary members are traditionally recruited. I did a great deal of archival and historical research and worked with several other anthropologists there comparing notes from our various corners of the field site.

Q) What was one of your most memorable experiences with the media in Ireland and why?

A) Perhaps the most telling moment was the moment the Good Friday Agreement was announced. There were about 600 journalists at the talks by then. Most of the local political leaders, the Prime Ministers of Ireland, the United Kingdom, former US Senator Mitchell (Talks co-chair) and many others came out in front of the building where the negotiations were conducted.

While 600 reporters were transfixed by the mob of political leaders on that stage celebrating the conclusion of these talks, I caught the leader of the largest party in Ireland, a man who would soon win the noble Peace Prize for agreeing to compromise with the Irish Catholic population, the man who would soon become the First Minister of Northern Ireland -- David Trimble -- sneaking around behind the 600 reporters trying to escape without having to appear on the same stage as the Irish Catholic political leadership.

I got a brief interview with him, one I shared with local reporters. Only two other reporters caught on that he was sneaking away I think that moment is important, because David Trimble spent the next 7 years working to prevent that peace agreement from functioning. Viewed from the vantage point of 7-8 years of dysfunction and inertia that seems to characterize the 'Good Friday Peace Agreement', watching Trimble sneak away seemed to sum up everything that has gone wrong with that agreement since the day it was concluded.

Another key moment -- feel free to use either one -- was during the Drum Cree Siege of 1998. It was a truly horrific week of violence. Over a dozen Catholic churches were burned, along with hundreds of Catholic businesses and homes. Thousands of Catholics were driven from their homes and any catholic with two pounds in their pockets fled the province. The whole province was convulsed in violence over the 'right' of Protestants to march through a Catholic neighborhood to celebrate the domination of Protestants over Catholics. Around the community they laid 'siege' to, tens of thousands of protestants rioted for days.

One night, while the police and army lines that protected the community from this mob were being rained on by a barrage of rockets, firebombs, home-made hand-grenades and rocks, the chief of Reuters finally lost it. She just blurted out, 'I wish I could report this the way it is.'

Taken aback by this moment of candor, I asked why. Her senior reporter -- a man who had been covering events in NI since the civil rights movement of the 1960's, looked at me darkly and said, 'because we'd be fired'.

Political power can shape the terms and narratives of stories, in ways that reporters will only whisper about. While their sense of ethics demands they report what they see, the politics of their industry demand their silence sometimes. Perhaps that's why some of them were so willing to talk with me. It was a chance to whisper truths they dared not publish themselves.

Q) Can you make a prediction about the future of the media in Ireland?

A) Predictions are dangerous. Too many factors to ever figure the future correctly. But if I were to identify some trends here are a few:

Irish media ownership will continue to slip into international corporate hands. News agencies will continue to divest themselves of reporters and the news will increasingly become as vacuous as it has in the US. While the Irish in NI were slower than the Irish republic in moving to the internet, that process will continue to accelerate. Since Northern Ireland's politics are a maze of minor political traditions on both sides of the conflict, these groups will continue to become more savy in using the internet.

Unless the Irish start blowing each other up again, the international press will Ignore Northern Ireland and pretend its problems have all been solved. Sadly, if it bleeds, it leads.

Peace is only a 'news story' the day the agreements are signed. But making peace is a process that has to be encouraged, monitored, refined and -- at times -- pushed along. The bright lights of good fortune encourage the peace process, because the media offers a platform to wage political struggle without recourse to violence. But if no one is paying attention, if those who seek to identify problems are ignored, then they may turn to more draconian means of getting attention. In NI, neglect by the media could encourage those who think violence is the way to gain access to the soundstage the news media provides. I don't think current conditions favor a resurgence of political violence, but it always remains a possibility.

Q) What is the most popular form of media in Ireland and why?

A) Well, television is the most prominent. Everyone watches TV, but at the working class level, neither community trusts the BBC and even Irish Catholics are cynical about RTE (Irish national television). Protestants don't watch RTE at all. Newspapers in the North remain a vital force. Digital radio is starting to make its mark, but its unclear how much impact it has yet. The Irish in the North are voracious news junkies, while folks in the Irish Republic pay much less attention to the news. And the internet is becoming a more significant information outlet for many Irish. But as I said, that trend is running a couple of years behind the US, particularly in Northern Ireland.

Q) How do the attitudes, personalities, and ethics of journalists in Ireland compare to those of the journalists in the US?

A) Irish reporters recognize that they are an intrinsic part of the political process and, as such, they tend to feel accountable to the same standards they demand of politicians (perhaps more as an ideal than a lived reality). But nearly every Irish reporter in the North took time to let me interview them. Many described their reasons for sitting and talking with me as an ethical obligation to be transparent in their work and accountable to those who read their work. Of course, they protected their sources and their leads, but they all took time to answer my questions. Many took me around with them, allowing us to have a more informal and in-depth dialogue, in between press conferences and the like.

Despite the fact they worked for many competing companies, I was surprised at the level of cooperation among Irish reporters. While 'exclusive' stories and interviews were zealously protected so they could get their 'scoop', in general, reporters readily shared information with each other and cooperated a great deal in the daily work of journalism. As with all professions, there were outstanding examples and corrupted hacks. But by and large, I was impressed by their integrity and diligence. US print reporters often spoke glowingly about the quality of Irish journalists and their work ethic.

The quality and ethical character of US reporters varied widely, depending on the medium they reported in. US print journalists were usually fairly reflective about their work and sophisticated in their understanding of NI. The NPR, Boston Globe and the Philadelphia Inquirer reporters stood out to me in terms of their knowledge and sensitivity to the subject.

Jim Dee from the Boston Herald was perhaps the best American reporter in NI, in terms of on-the-ground knowledge and access to a wide variety of interests, parties and paramilitaries. He worked the beat the 'old fashioned' way and had the respect of NI journalists.

The weakest of the US print media was the NY Times. That reporter wrote most of his stories in Scotland, not Ireland and pretty much phoned in his work from where ever he was vacationing. He was eventually replaced by a kid right out of Yale. While he was a nice enough fellow, he didn't seem to know anything about anything.

The AP reporter was basically a cyborg, wired to his desk by a headset telephone. He had 7 minutes to get a story out -- lest he lose the race to another news wire service -- so he was pinned to his desk and dependent on TV, radio, phone and fax machine to get the story. Even he acknowledged that he couldn't be the best reporter under the conditions he worked. Most of his reports were second-hand accounts from other media outlets, rewritten for American audiences.

But the worst class of reporters had to be the US television reporters. With a couple of key exceptions (CNN's Christiana Ananpour and another CNN reporter, whose name escapes me now), they had little to no knowledge of NI. They made snap decisions, based on their own ethnocentric presumptions and were not forthcoming about their ethics or their decision making processes. Their reports were shoddily put together and some of them were so arrogantly ignorant they incited laughter and derision from local reporters.

Some US news agencies (CNN and Fox, particularly) make their staff sign non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from, well -- talking to the media! While two CNN reporters did give me 'off the record' interviews (not terribly informative) and their 'stringers' -- local, temporary staff picked up to do specific tasks -- talked their heads off, Fox reporters refused to speak with me, citing their non-disclosure agreement.

Q) Do the US and Irish media differ because of country size at all? Could that be a factor in how we get our information?

A) Several factors make a significant difference, size of the region, the length of tenure for communities living in one place, a culturally reinforced critical posture toward the news media and a strong sense of history's role in contemporary events.

Size is certainly a major factor. Northern Ireland is about 2/3 the size of New Jersey, with a population 2/3 the size of Brooklyn. The whole Island is probably not much bigger than Maine and has about 5 million people living there. That's less than the population of Brooklyn and Queens. The enormous size of the US, combined with concentration of most media outlets into the hands of very few companies, encourages homogeneity in news reportage, defanged of its potential to skew the powerful. In the US, there are far fewer news outlets competing in any given market and that also encourages a dearth of competing viewpoints.

Additionally, the US has no law to encourage or require presenting competing viewpoints. Those laws were dismantled in the 1980's. Ireland has such laws, which means that minority viewpoints get their day in the sun.

On both sides of the conflict, families have been living in the area for many, many generations. In some cases for over a thousand years. Both communities tend to view the press critically and with great distrust. And both communities have informal information systems -- rumor machines -- that can circulate information and perspectives almost as fast as television.

By comparison, US populations move frequently. The community we live in may not be that central to our daily life. We don't know our neighbors, a pattern of behavior that becomes more prevalent as Americans move from town to town more frequently. We live atomized lives with fragmented relationships. Thus, we depend on the news media for a primary interpretation of events, while the Irish will more likely depend on their neighbor, cousiin or someone feel has an insider's view on the situation.

But this is trend is more apparent in Northern Ireland than in the Irish republic. As the Irish Republic becomes wealthier, its citizens show less interest in the news and more concerned about enjoying a consumer lifestyle. More like Americans, really.

That said, the Irish tend to view contemporary events in a historical context. But Americans have no sense of history -- beyond its broadest and most mythological moments -- and tend not to make connections between the past and the present. Certain news mediums, particularly TV, tend to operate in the 'eternal now'. That is, the contemporary moment -- the event -- is presented without any real historical, cultural or political context and the story is pitched emotionally, rather than analytically. The average news story in Europe is 2-4 minutes long. In the US, its 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. So US television news does not encourage a historically deep understanding of contemporary events. Rather it seeks to grab us by our emotions and 'shock' us with images, while explaining little.

Plus, American have been raised and encouraged to trust the media as purveyors of 'The Truth', while the Irish have always tended to view the news media -- and particularly TV -- as a mouthpiece for political and economic elites. The Irish tend not to trust elites and they have a more pluralistic understanding of 'truth'.

These combined forces -- and no doubt, many others -- make it more possible for the news industry in the US to become the primary definer of significant events, while the Irish will listen to the news, talk to those they trust and make their own mind up.