When ‘fake news’ is the word of the year, real journalism is more vital than ever. So let’s raise a toast!

THERE are few sore heads around Dublin this morning, I’d wager. Yesterday, our industry got together for the annual Newsbrands Ireland Journalism Awards, honouring the best work of the past year in a range of categories from news and sport to politics and criticism.

It is, for those of us in the business, a fun day out, a chance to fraternise with friendly, and sometimes not so friendly, rivals. We toast the success of those in our own newspaper who actually won, commiserate with those who didn’t, and generally applaud the work the industry does, not only in exposing the stories the powerful don’t want you to read, but hopefully also doing so in clear English and, when the occasion calls for it, doing so entertainingly too.

Stereotype

The popular stereotype of the boozy hack is long a thing of the past, but even allowing for that, I’m pretty sure there are a few this morning who woke up and whose first panicked thought was: ‘What did I do with the award?’ Later today, though, they will switch back to full professional mode, many of them already working on stories that tomorrow and on Sunday will set the agenda for the rest of the week.

Journalism has been my life. I started on a work placement in the Sunday World between first and second year at college, when I was still only 17 – and more than 36 years later, I’m still writing, because it has never been an option not to do so. I am as in love with my job today as I was as a teenager. I love everything about this business – the first sniff of a story, watching it all come together, arguing the toss with the lawyers, seeing it laid out on a page and, back in the old days when the printing presses actually were on site, feeling a low thrum of energy pass through the entire building as the massive machines cranked into action and thousands of copies rolled off in bundles every hour.

It is an intoxicating business, but it is one that is under threat. This week, Facebook announced third-quarter advertising revenue of $10billion, and profit was $4.7billion. The figures were released on foot of the admission, earlier this week, that Facebook ads paid for by Russians during the US presidential election last year reached 146million Americans, more than the number who actually voted. For many in America, it is their primary source of news, and when so much of it is unverifiable, at best, and pure fiction at worst, it threatens to undermine journalism completely.

In this, it has help from the highest levels. Yesterday, the Collins Dictionary announced that its word of the year actually was two words – ‘fake news’. The term, endlessly repeated by US president Donald Trump, has seeped into popular consciousness; he is seeking to destroy one of the pillars of a democracy, the free press that holds politicians to account.

Trump has given his constituency permission to ignore fact. News doesn’t have to be fake to be ‘fake news’ nowadays. It can be bulletproof factually, but if it conflicts with the opinion of the reader, then no matter how well verified or painstakingly researched it is, it will never be anything more than ‘fake news’.

Hypocrisy

This is a very disturbing development and, I have to be honest, one that personally I find heartbreaking. On this side of the fence, I have, many times over the years, seen the toll dogged news-hunting has taken on many who bring a righteous zeal to their work. I know of the family events that were missed, the marriages that split up, the trauma of legal threats from those with deep pockets.

On the other side of the coin, I have seen the elation that follows a story of societal importance – the campaigns that saw children get operations they desperately needed, the exposure of fraud and hypocrisy in high places, the unmasking of those who prey on the vulnerable.

Facebook and Google do not do these things. They spend no money on investigative journalism, or indeed on much in the way of original content at all. Other revenue-generating sites that do actually deliver news often rely heavily on the ego of a contributor who will work for little money, or none at all, just to get his or her name out there. There is little investment in journalism as a career – and yet real journalism is more important today than it has ever been.

The entire world, in the past few weeks, has been galvanised by an endless stream of revelations of sexual harassment, abuse and rape by powerful men, preying on vulnerable young women, men and even teenagers. It started the old-fashioned way, with a meticulously researched article in The New Yorker by journalist Ronan Farrow, and it followed in a long tradition of journalism that changed society, from Woodward and Bernstein toppling President Nixon over Watergate, to the current exposés on ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Bogus

In this country, Bertie Ahern’s finances were exposed by newspapers, as were Charles Haughey’s, Ray Burke’s and Liam Lawlor’s before him. So was the news that Bishop Eamonn Casey and Fr Michael Cleary had fathered three children between them. Newspapers broke the story of the Tuam babies, the top-up pay deals and bogus expenses claims by charity bosses, the death of Savita Halappanavar, and the huge fees paid to consultants by Irish Water.

A recent case highlights what we do best. When the falsified figures for Garda breath tests were revealed, newspapers were the medium that stayed doggedly with the story, and explained it in a depth not always possible in other media. In particular, this newspaper adduced evidence showing that how the pressure to perform, even if it meant the figures were bogus, came from the top; months later, this week’s Policing Authority report confirmed exactly that.

And that’s the point about quality journalism: it’s not just the story on the front page. It’s the attention to detail on every story – the checking, the pursuing, the analysing, the explaining, the editorial decisions about which facts are truly relevant, or about what something really means.

Governments nowadays know that we are so deluged with information from so many sources, winnowing it down is difficult. Rather than releasing very little of it, they now produce it by the tonne, hopeful that no one will see an individual pin in a pincushion. Our job is to find that pin, and we look for it seven days a week, 365 days a year.

That’s not fake news. That’s real news. It’s who we are and what we do. I’m immensely proud to have celebrated that yesterday… even if I am paying the price for it today!