New Figures Reveal Significant Rise In Unemployment Headlines
Posted on | May 5, 2008
1913 Lockout – one of the more commonly
used analogies
The number of published articles concerning Irish unemployment levels continues to climb according to new data released over the weekend.
It shows that the number of journalists submitting pieces on Ireland’s worsening unemployment rate rose to 2,400 by the last week in April – an increase of approximately 2,000 since January.
The sheer number of unemployment scare stories that have appeared in newspapers and magazines in 2008 indicates that editors are commissioning articles on the “collapse of the Irish economy” – or variations on that theme – to cash in on people’s financial fears.
The data also reveal that both freelance and staff contributors to press outlets are frequently resorting to alarmist copy when writing about unemployment.
Statisticians and media analysts from Dublin City Institute of Technological Universities compiled the figures over a period of six months, during which they monitored hype trends in Irish journalism.
RTÉ is also expected to release figures this week on their editorial output for the first four months of the year. These are expected to show that the number of news reports, features, current affairs specials etc. concerning the impending economic disaster aired by the national broadcaster has also sky-rocketed.
According to these new figures, unemployment-related stories have reached a record-high of 26.5% of all newspaper copy.
This is in stark contrast to five years ago, when stories highlighting Ireland’s unemployed all but ceased to exist, barely hitting 0.01% of total press coverage. In the same year, articles celebrating Ireland’s property boom constituted 75% of all opinion/analysis columns.
“The steady growth in numbers signing onto the Live Register is mirroring the surge in media reports of the alleged death of the Irish economic miracle,” says Kingsley Burgess, lecturer in media studies at DCITU and one of the data compilers .
“One of the most interesting things we discovered in the course of our research,” he explains, “was the reluctance of journalists to use terms like ‘the poor’ or ‘the working classes’ in their pieces.
“Hence the prevalence of phrases like ‘those living at the lower end of the socio-economic scale’ or ‘the economically disadvantaged’ to describe poor people.”
“It is also no surprise to learn the media’s new-found concern about Ireland’s have-nowts has coincided with the recent explosion of gang violence in Limerick.” continues Burgess.
“Now that one of the major consequences of poverty – the growth of criminal gangs – can no longer be ignored, newspapers and media outlets can indulge themselves in compassionate commentaries on the plight of our nation’s underclass – ten years too late.”
Chief economologist with IBEC (Irish Business and Employers Coven) Frugal O’Breen has also predicted that “over the coming months Celtic Tiger propaganda disseminated both home and abroad” will decrease by up to 20%.
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