The Mary Raftery Journalism Fund was delighted to welcome Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly as one of its guest speakers for the fund’s official launch. Here is a full transcript of her speech:
I’d like to thank Mary’s family, the One Foundation and everyone involved in this initiative for the invitation to address you here today.
It was my great privilege to have known Mary. In the last few years of her life, as she continued to produce work that unpicked yet another layer of the fabric that is the real story of this State, it was always a particular pleasure to be able to text her to congratulate her and to get the usual warm and modest responses back. It’s not that Mary was particularly modest but her acceptance of praise was always gracious. Today however is not just a tribute to Mary but also to David, a colleague in the Ombudsman’s office, for his seeking to mark a seamless transition from Mary’s life work into this work that will also be her legacy.
Journalism – or what is now rather sentimentally called traditional journalism – faces a challenge that really can be called existential. The digital revolution has brought change on a scale that is as irresistible as it is profound and matched with a global recession the result is freefall. Digital has done to newspapers and to the human architecture of old media what the motorcar did to the ass and cart and to the ass and cart drivers. The print media ‘s former customers have now become their own publishers. The walls between the professional and the outside amateur have collapsed.
The broadcast media is also affected, we witnessed last week the closure of RTE’s London office for budgetary reasons and advertising revenue is increasingly migrating to the digital world. Budgets are squeezed and journalism has to suffer as a consequence. Investigative journalism is an expensive commodity but it is also a vital commodity for the holding of the State and of its institutions to account and nothing represents the truth of that more than the journalism of Mary Raftery.
In Britain, part prompted by the telephone hacking scandal that itself prompted the Levenson inquiry into, inter alia, the ethics of journalism, a House of Lords Select Committee began an investigation into The Future of Investigative Journalism embarking upon an extensive engagement with, among others, regulators, Government Ministers, media owners and journalists. It was an exercise that legislators in this country might do well to emulate. Its report, published in February of this year, set out the worth of investigative journalism alongside the challenges, but it also defined its terms.
Anything of worth, anything that churns up the institutions… will always be met by the human defensive desire to resist, to avoid.
Investigative journalism – as opposed to other kinds of reporting – is characterised as that which requires a significant investment in terms of resources and or funding, runs a high risk of potential litigation and uncovers previously unreported issues of public interest. Mary’s journalism certainly ticked all of those boxes. Most of us in this room are aware of the barriers she encountered, at times within RTE itself, as she sought to have her and her team’s work afforded its appropriate space in the station schedules. At the beautiful commemoration service for Mary in the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham David spoke of the impact that this had on her both emotionally and physically. Yet, almost by definition, investigative journalism and its practitioners, have to carry that weight, have to meet and seek to overcome many obstacles that challenge them in the way that Mary and her team were challenged.
Anything of worth, anything that churns up the institutions – private or public – of a State to a point where those institutions have profoundly to change will always be met by the human defensive desire to resist, to avoid.
At its best, said the UK report, investigative journalism informs and educates us, enhances our democracy and is a force for good. It is a vital constituent of the system of democratic governance and accountability.
Yet rapid technological, economic and behavioural change is creating profound economic legal and regulatory challenges for investigative journalism and how it might be conducted in the future. Investigative journalism is particularly vulnerable to economic pressures as it is inherently risky and comes with no guaranteed return. We all aware of the catastrophic outcome of the Prime Time Investigates programme, not just for the person at the centre of the story, but also for a number of some of your former colleagues, most if not all of whom, I contend, set about their work with the highest of motivation. One of the risks of such resource heavy investigations is that at a certain point, hard decisions have to be made and those hard decisions may include the jettisoning of an entire, expensive piece of work. But that is the price.
In its conclusions, the Committee recommended that Government and media explore a number of new ways in which the type of journalism that serves as a vital accountability tool in a democracy might be supported in the face of the declining revenues of traditional newspaper and broadcast media. One proposal was that such journalism could be deemed to have a charitable purpose and so qualify for appropriate reliefs.
Now some British politicians were forced to reach for the smelling salts when that was suggested with the Secretary of State for Culture musing about the “curiosity” of being asked to support as he said “something that is supposed to make my life difficult”. Even the Committee found it difficult to give it a full throated approval yet if such journalism really is deemed to have a significant public interest benefit, then the idea might merit at the very least, further discussion.
A proposal that might be more politically attractive is that fines imposed on publishers and broadcasters by their regulatory or self regulatory bodies for breaching codes of conduct could be used to support an Investigative Journalism fund which both individual journalists and media organisations could apply to. This would have some merit and if we consider that some of the 200,000 euro fine imposed on RTE by the BAI for the Prime Time Investigates programme might have been used to support the kind of work that this new fund is seeking to support, some real public good might have been wrested from that sad episode.
As far as I am aware the Press Council of Ireland does not impose fines and it will be interesting to see whether a new system of press regulation in the UK seeks to so do. One potential downside of course is that we could have the “good” journalists hoping that the “bad” journalists would be really really bad so that they could get lots more money to do the good journalism. One could also imagine the accountancy headaches this proposal might pose in some large newspaper or media stables with parcels of money being constantly passed over and back from one side the other.
The UK report also noted the successful growth of free standing philanthropic institutions dedicated to investigative journalism. And that idea certainly finds a resonance here today. The ProPublica Institute in New York was singled out for special attention as was the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK. And I would recomend all of you to look at the extremely impressive work that both have done to date.
We all know what happened to a similar venture, the Centre for Public Inquiry, that was started by Frank Connolly with the support of Atlantic Philanthropies some years ago. Frank Connolly, a former colleague of mine from the Sunday Business Post, was also a journalist who did groundbreaking work in this State. I would hope that this initiative being launched here today might well prompt a re engagement around the idea of the creation of a similar free standing entity.
Before I conclude, I would like to share some reflections on the nature and character of the people who – sometimes only a handful in a generation – emerge as true investigative journalists and ask Mary’s family and friends if they find an echo in these descriptions. John Mair, a Senior Lecturer in Broadcast Journalism at Coventry University noted, “investigative journalists can be quite difficult people. They are good journalists, they are accurate, but they have two or three qualities that make them stand out. They have a sense of mischief. They like to cause mischief and they are also bloody determined. You will not put them off the scent.” While the Guardian editor, Alan Rushbridger simply noted, “Investigative reporters’ brains are wired differently.”
Finally, I wish this initiative nothing but the very best. I also hope that Olivia and those charged with the allocation of the funds will make it exceedingly difficult for people to get their hands on them. Investigative Journalism of the kind practised by Mary Raftery and those who collaborated in her work, should not be easily or quickly done and should encounter at least some difficulty in finding a home. This initiative can be a trailblazer, a signifier of excellence, a raiser of standards but more than anything a fitting and profound tribute to the memory of the journalist Mary Raftery.
