Rapidly changing times in the ever-evolving world of media

World of Politics with Harry McGee

In one of his last major speeches as Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar announced what was effectively the end of lockdown on June 29 – and during the course of that speech he name-checked a list of front-line and essential professions who had been in the trenches during the pandemic.

The media was among them. I’m always among the first to defend journalists who just don’t deserve the low trust ratings they get from the public.

But that said, I don’t think most journalists who worked during the pandemic were asked to do anything too radically different than pre-Covid. Most were working from home and those who went to events were subject to strict social distancing rules.

Only a few journalists actually braved going into Covid-19 wards or nursing homes. So for that reason, I am not sure if we should have been mentioned in the same breath as those people who were working in environments with potential exposure to the virus.

Perhaps that’s not what Varadkar was referring to. The media did a job in terms of keeping the public informed throughout. In that sense, it underlined the vital role that journalists play in society.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about journalism and its place in society, and how it has evolved, changed and diffused. My focus has been mainly on political journalism, which has become – by default – my specialism over the past 17 years.

In August 2003, I left the Sunday Tribune, where I was special correspondent, to become political editor of the Irish Examiner. I have been working in political journalist ever since – from early 2009 with The Irish Times.

That has been an enormous time of change for our medium; from print alone to a variety of new platforms…online to video to audio to social media.

In the newspaper days, you wrote perhaps two or three articles each day, generally filing them in the evening. Sometimes you were given a bit of leeway to write a longer piece that might take up a page at the weekend.

All that still happens now.

The difference is that there are dozens of other things that you must do each day. If there is a fast-moving story you are expected to file immediately for breaking news.

For example, when the Ministerial appointments were being made last week there was a race between all the media organisations to get first with the news that so-and-so had landed a big job, or somebody else was fired.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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