FMA NEWSLETTER—Winter, 2006.

 

 

CLERAUN MEDIA CONFERENCE

 

 

The 11^th Cleraun Media Conference, which took place on Saturday 21^st and Sunday 22^nd October 2006 in Cleraun, Dublin, was a tremendous success. The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Professional Integrity’, and significant contributions were made by a wide range of high profile speakers from the national and international media.

If one event stood out in particular, from a conference which had been opened by ‘Media Minister’ Noel Dempsey TD, it was the address of Kenneth Woodward, former Religion Editor and current Contributing Editor of Newsweek Magazine. His paper, entitled: After objectivity: what moral norms should govern news reporting? dealt with the issue of ‘Newsroom Culture’ and, in particular, with the failure of The New York Times to use the term ‘partial birth abortion’ when writing about  partial birth abortion. The speaker was at pains to emphasise that his criticism of the New York Times was not based on his own attitude to abortion (an attitude which was difficult to infer directly from the talk) but was, instead, to do with the ethics of news reporting. To fail to use a particular term, on, merely, the ideological grounds that it would favour ‘the other side’, was not, he pointed out, a tenable position for a newspaper

Mr. Woodward also raised some other challenging issues for those listening, who included the Chair for the talk, Peter Murtagh, Managing Editor of The Irish Times, a last minute replacement for Geraldine Kennedy. Fox News, the conservative American news station has now overtaken CNN in viewing statistics as the number one news station in the United States.

This can be partly explained by the fact that there are many people (in Texas, in particular) who believe that “if the New York Times say it, it’s definitely not true”. The failure of the New York Times to take Protestant Evangelicals seriously, and by extension those with conservative values, in general, has lead to that paper, a flagship for liberal values, which also prides itself as being the leading ‘serious newspaper’ in the United States, losing its influence over large sections of American society. Could the same problem be facing the mainstream press in Ireland?

The impression that this might well be the case was strengthened by                       Mr. Woodward’s reply to a question by Dearbhail MacDonald, formerly of the London Times and now Legal Affairs Correspondent with The Irish Independent. Ms McDonald asked if Mr. Woodward knew of any instances where a conservative news agency had ( in a way similar to the New York Times) failed, for purely ideological reasons, to use a broadly accepted term. His answer, which was in the negative, seemed to cast a cloud over a number of the journalists present. It was as though a warning shot had been fired across the bows of the liberal media by someone who is, in many ways, a fellow traveller.

           In general, the conference was an excellent advertisement for the Catholic Church, and enormous credit is due to Paul Harman who helped ensure a positive experience for all who attended.