Where's the Press? - Lack of Media Scrutiny in Cork

There’s no way to sugar coat it, Cork city is facing some major issues. Urban decay and dereliction are common features of the cityscape, while transport infrastructure across the city is falling apart. I’m not just talking bike lanes, bike stands or Coke Zero Bikes here, I’m talking about everything here. Potholed roads, lose pavement stones by the dozens, bike lanes that are clogged with debris or flooded outright. Basically, if it gets people from a to b in Cork, whether on foot or in a vehicle, chances are it’s falling apart and becoming a hazard. And that’s before we even talk about the non-enforcement of any parking regulation or the fact that the city centre seems to have become a safe haven for grifters and con artists with no sign that the city gives a damn about it, or any other issue. And it’s not just the city itself, large organisations in general are given free reign, as the latest attempted land grab by the GAA clearly shows. 

In many cities, stories like these would be all over the local press, from newspapers to radio stations. Yet, if you read through any given edition of the Irish Examiner, the Echo, listen to Red FM or Cork’s 96 FM, or check online “news” portals such as Cork Beo, you’re left with the impression that everything is rosy on Leeside. There is talk about the latest dining hotspot, another great new council initiative, the efforts an artist is making to beautify the city, or how a hotel owner completely pwned an obnoxious guest or reviewer, all of which are pushed out on the respective Facebook pages and Twitter feeds ad nauseam. Yet you’ll be hard-pressed to find any article that focuses on the increasing dereliction in the city centre, the complete parking free-for-all that sees cars left everywhere, including pedestrianised stretches or plazas such as Grand Parade, or the piss-poor state of maintenance of all but the most recent bits of infrastructure in Cork. Any such articles that do pop up are superficial, little more than soundbites hidden in the back pages of the papers and either not pushed on social media at all or only in the wee hours of the night, when few locals are around to read them, or made up as “poor us” sob stories that cast a condescendingly pitying look over the issues, much like colonial era coverage of the “poor savages” in the colonies of whichever empire you choose , while completely failing to look at the actual issues at hand. 

Why is this so? How come that Cork, the second largest city in Ireland, seems to only have milquetoast journalists employed in its local news outlets? Why are even national newspapers such as the Irish Examiner so tame and cowed when it comes to local issues? Well, it’s time to take a closer look at what can only be described as a perfect storm. 

For starters, lets look at Cork as a whole. Notwithstanding the fact that Cork is Ireland’s second largest city, or indeed the second largest English-speaking city in the EU following the UK’s slow-motion suicide, with a population of 220,000, it really isn’t that large, as much as Leesiders will try to supress that fact. Neither is its catchment area, which is mostly rural. This leads to two crucial consequences. On one hand, this significantly restricts the potential audience any particular media outlet can reach, meaning that none of the two daily papers, three private radio stations, or online portals can afford to burn large parts of their readership or listeners. Seriously, even a small drop in readership could have a significant financial impact in such a small market and given that print media in particularly have been struggling economically over the last few decades, such drops could very quickly turn into an existential thread.

This small nature also reduces the distance between journalists and any potential interviewees or story subjects. Whether it’s politicians, council executives, civil servants, sports figures or business leaders, they are still part of a relatively tight-knit community, meaning that word of mouth can travel quickly and a few words in the right ear can make or break a career. While this might help with getting leads on potential stories, it also leaves journalists and even local bloggers open to retaliation and character assassination if they “rise above their station” or end up angering the wrong person. In such a challenging environment, reporters may simply not be willing to burn bridges, especially given the well-documented petulance and vindictiveness of city leaders such as Ann Doherty or councillors like Terry Shannon. 

There is more to this question though than simple economy or fear of retribution. After all, readers generally love to see the powerful ripped to shreds in the papers or on the news. There is something to be said about seeing politicians and business executives humbled, if only for a couple of minutes, by a particularly damning disclosure or article. Yet, when it comes to Cork, there is little to see of that in the media. Even when there is a critical article, unless it affects national politics, there is hardly ever anything resembling actual criticism to be found. Now of course the comment sections on Facebook Twitter and the likes will be foaming with vitriol, hatred and misanthropy we’ve all come to expect of them at the mere mention of a politician’s name, but 95% of that is simply tribalist outrage, probably driven by cans of cheap lager and self-loathing rather than any actual criticism of the matter at hand. There is a curious reluctance to challenge local politicians.

At least partially, this is due to an extremely well-developed sense of local pride here in Cork. “The Rebel City”, “The Real Capital”, all these epithets are regularly used to describe Cork and despite repeated claims that this is only used in jest or as a little in-joke, a significant part of the population seems to have taken this to heart and started believing their own PR. This does include media personalities and journalists as well who will more often than not tend to go for a “hooray for us” line of reporting rather than facing the issues at hand. Of course, there is also a very real issue of anyone who does clearly mention the issues and begins to name names running the risk of being ostracized and told to get the f**k out of Cork if they don’t like it. While this type of nativist crap is a sure-fire sign of intellectual insolvency on the part of the person uttering it, it is still thrown around with wild abandon. In general, it seems as if the people of Cork prefer having their egos stroked much more than they like living in a city that is actually liveable and sustainable in the long run.

Finally and most controversially for many, there’s the issue of civic engagement with public life. To put it bluntly, despite their big mouths and huge egos, the people of Cork don’t seem to give a damn about their city! Granted, there are some civic action groups around, Mad About Cork and Meitheal Mara come to mind right of the bad, but these groups are invariably very small. What’s more, most of the groups that do exist, such as “Save Cork City”/”Love the Lee” are little more than agglomerations of NIMBYs who are hell-bent on preventing any positive change, or indeed any change at all in the city. It appears that as long as the “good” people of Cork are able to take pot shots against the other 25 counties in Ireland, particularly Dublin and Kerry,  they are more than willing to wallow in stagnant mediocrity.

With such a disinterested audience, it just doesn’t make sense for journalists to go after the big issues in the city. There is little to no commercial benefit for their employers when it comes to publishing them, while at the same time such efforts pose a significant professional and personal risk for the author of any overly critical piece. And at the end of the day, journalists, like everyone else, have to think first and foremost about paying the rent/mortgage and putting food on the table. At the end of this piece I’m left with the conclusion that it is not so much the fault of the journalist community here in Cork that there is little scrutiny of the council and its staff. Due to a combination of a small, highly competitive market, a mostly disinterested and unengaged population and a vindictive council, there is simply not the market in Cork for this type of uncomfortable, critical journalism. Fluff pieces and general outrage stories generally sell a lot better. Whether this type of self-congratulatory stupor will work for the city in the long run is anyone’s guess, but given the vastly changing economic environment as the world slowly emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, “We Are Cork” might very well not be enough to secure a future for Cork.