Blurred Keys

Just with reports of music, film, and game piracy “costing” businesses in ‘lost’ revenue and the State in tax ‘lost’ taxes, one cannot lose something you never had. Claims from the Irish Tobacco Manufactures Advisory Committee of ‘loses’ as reported by the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner recently are likely to be on the high side.

With lower music sales being blamed on piracy, reports from the OECD and others have said a more significant impact is likely to be consumers not having money to spend on growing types of media. Other reports outline how people downloading large amounts of music illegally are often the best consumers of the music and buy large amounts of music, gig tickets, and merchandise.

But the piracy line by these industries is still been reported as fact or claims without any mention of independent reports from groups such as the OECD which take a different line.

In the same vain, cigarette smokers who buy illegally imported cigarettes most likely could not afforded the same amount of cigarettes at the very high legal cigarette prices in Ireland. And it’s more complex than the cigarette industry claim, or what at least what is the result or their claims to newspapers.

There’s a lot to consider. Cost-benefit analysis for strict, strict control by the State would show a drop off of any possible benefit at some point –- it becomes more costly to control illegal imports than any possible tax take would generate. Even levered against health spend benefit, the benefit drops off. So, very strict controls would not be worth the cost. Control measures at ports can also damage other business by slowing down goods movements.

Furthermore, somebody is getting their figures messed up, the Irish Independent reported last month that:

“The manufacturers said last night the figures showed the geographic spread of the market for the smuggled cigarettes, which were estimated by the authorities to cost the Exchequer €500m every year in lost revenue”

But just at the start of the year the same reporter in the same newspaper said the following:

“In 2007, the Irish Government lost some €352m in taxes because of smuggling”

So, the most recent report claims that the cost to the Exchequer is “€500m every year”, but the same paper about five months before reported the Exchequer only lost “some €352m” in 2007? It get worse, the earlier reports says:

“CIGARETTE smuggling is predicted to cost the country more than €500m in lost revenue within a year”

So, what was first reported to maybe happen within a year, the second report tells the reader this is happening “every year.” Amazing stuff. Something which is predicted to happen “within a year” is then apparently happening “every year”. But the Indo’s Sunday paper, the Sunday Independent, said only in April:

“Cost to State of EUR2-per-pack price rise could have been as much as EUR500m in lost revenue”

So, get this. What is reported as something which only “could have” happened just back in April is already happening “every year.” Fault can often be found with this type of reportage based on reports and figures –- which rarely have an explained source or author — released by groups for one or another industry or cause. And often the PR people behind the apparent facts and figures are good enough at their jobs that blunders won’t be as obvious in reports just month apart, or figures will look realistic. However, in this case, the Examiner said on Saturday that:

“The illegal trade is reaching epidemic proportions and one estimate, for the losses to the exchequer per year by the end of 2010 of excise duties and VAT, has been put at 750 million”

Even if larger demand for illegal supply in a recession is taken into account, this is quite a jump from the claim of “€500m every year” printed in the Irish Independent last month – and even the €500m figure is in doubt given the record of reporting on the issue.

Below is a link to a survey on crime coverage in Irish
newspapers that I compiled for other reasons but might as well publish here. A sample week was taken in which all crime articles were recorded in
the national daily morning newspapers.

Here’s some of the main or interesting points…

• The Irish Daily Star and the Irish Examiner had the most
  crime articles with 127 and 114 stories respectively in total for the week.
• The Examiner also had the highest recorded amount of crime
  articles in any one newspaper on any one day, at 31 stories for Wednesday. The
  next two highest are 27 and 26 for the Wednesday and Thursday editions of the Irish Daily Star.
• The Irish Independent and the Irish Daily Mail had the
  least amount of crime articles with 47 and 38 respectively.
• Out of the eight
  daily papers and nine Sunday papers, there were a total of 57 covers. Just 18
  of these covers had no crime coverage on them; the vast majority – 68 percent –
  had crime on the cover page.
• Across daily
  titles, Monday has the lowest amount of crime stories. The low amount of crime
  reporting on this day can largely be linked with the covering of Court proceedings. As there are no normal Court proceedings on Sundays, there are no
  such stories available for the newspapers on Mondays.
• Of the 22
  percent of the articles that related crimes in other countries, of that only
  four percent related to those with a substantial link to Ireland.
• The Irish Mirror had the highest weekly
  percentage of international stories at 38 percent. It also had the highest
  single day percentage, accounting for 59 percent, with 7 Irish and 10
  international stories.
• The Irish Times
  had the lowest amount of international crime articles at under 15 percent,
  while the other newspapers had around 20 percent
• With a sample breakdown of the types of crimes covered there
  was a large difference between newspapers. With murder, the Irish Examiner published the largest
  amount (25) of related articles, while the Irish
  Independent had less then half that amount (11). With rape, the Irish Daily Star published 11 stories, more
  than any other paper for the week, while at the other end of the scale the Irish Daily Mail had only one rape
  story.

The report, ‘Newspaper crime coverage in Ireland’, is here (PDF). Skip to part two for the survey. The content of part one has mostly been mentioned on this site before.   

Thomas Crosbie Holdings’ BreakingNews.ie was relaunched today, it’s the first attempt by an Irish national newspaper company to use embedded video and audio in the main section of their website.   

Irish blog, jazzbiscuit.com, has it just about spot on here…

After several years of stoically refusing to budge, BreakingNews.ie
gets a make over. The simplicity of the old site has been replaced with
a far more modern, but less scannable site. That was my favourite thing
about the old one, you could browse all the latest headlines in
seconds. You can still do that, but it takes a little longer. It
actually seems like you can still get the same old-school view, just by
viewing the site’s archives by day.

Still no bylines on the site! What is it about Irish media companies and online news? Why are there no bylines?

The TCH’s irishexaminer.com is also due to be relaunched later this year.

University Collage Cork is to hold
a journalism conference next month which will ask if newspapers are on
their last leg and in danger of being replaced by new media.

The event will include speakers from newspapers and new media.

MORE: The Ballyfermot Post

The following is a round-up of Irish media news for December 2007…

Read the rest of this entry »

Newspapers of  the Thomas Crosbie Holdings (TCH) media group could switch to production outsourcing, Anthony Dinan group managing director is quoted as saying in an interview in yesterday’s Sunday Tribune.  

Dinan said outsourcing was one of a number of cost-cutting moves which could be use.

He also said the recent outsourcing at rival IN&M paved the way for any such move without objection from the NUJ, but the NUJ said the vote by their members at IN&M titles was not a vote for an overall acceptance of the idea of outsourcing.

TCH owns the Irish Examiner, the Sunday Business Post, a large selection of regional newspapers and other media interests including a percentage of radio stations Red FM, Beat FM, and MidWest Radio.

A more up-to-date list is now here.

Since the original post was published the number of links we have to Irish
journalists’ blogs has massively expanded – mostly thanks to reader’s
comments on the last post.

Again, this is by no means a complete list. You can post additions,
corrections, comments, and, as always, abuse below. (You can comment
here without entering an email address, or name).

Adam Maguire, freelancer
Adrian Weckler, tech journalist / editor, S. Business Post
Dave Forsythe, Deputy Editor, Cork Independent
Declan Cashin, subeditor the Star; col. Irish Independent
Fergus Cassidy, freelancer
Gavin Sheridan, freelance sub-editor, Irish Examiner
Harry McGee, political editor, Irish Examiner
Haydn Shaughnessy tech journalist, the Irish Times
John Maguire, film critic, Irish Independent
John Reynolds, freelancer
John Naughton, (UK-based) columnist, the Observer
John Collins, tech journalist, the Irish Times
Karlin Lillington, tech journalist, the Irish Times
Kevin Rafter, assistant editor/political editor, Sunday Tribune
Kathy Foley freelancer, & columnist, the Sunday Times
Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, Andersonstown News Group
Ronan Fitzgerald, freelance journalist (the Guardian, Pitchfork)
Ruairi Roddy, technology officer, Thomas Crosbie Holdings
Ronan Price, Editor, Herald AM; tech col., Evening Herald 
Richard Delevan, business editor and col., Sunday Tribune
Sinead Gleeson, arts journalist, the Irish Times
Sarah Carey columnist the Sunday Times
Tom Griffin, (UK-based)
Una Mullally, journalist, Sunday Tribune

On Sunday anonymous or pseudonymous columns in the Irish Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Times felt the need to tackle the issues of Irish journalists who blog.

Both newspapers are Irish editions of UK newspapers, and while their parent companies in the UK have built-up decent online presences both web portals for Ireland.

We hope it was all in good fun (possibly in some stretch of the term), as the parent editions of both publications have a number of blogs on their websites; the Times have over 20 and the Mail at least seven. And the Irish edition of the Sunday Times have at least two columnists who also blog.

The Irish edition of News International’s the Sunday Times had a go at the Sunday Tribune’s Kevin Rafter and the Irish Examiner’s Harry McGee, saying "while there are not enough pages in their respective newspapers to allow the lads full vent, there is too much room on the internet, so both have launched political blogs, presumably so they can publish all the blather their editors cut out".

While in the Irish Mail on Sunday, the media column ‘the Spike’ also had a poke at Kevin Rafter, along with his Tribune colleagues Richard Delevan, and Una Mullally.

UK newspapers have embraced blogs and there are now more Irish journalists who blog, but no Irish newspaper has blogs built into their website. [Feck this internet thing, I think I’m ranting on about newspapers and blogs, again!]