Irish Times Gives Award to Itself
Oct 23rd, 2007 by Donagh
You may find it curious that at the moment the Irish Times is doing extensive coverage of Irish developers, those brave and assiduous men, and they are all men, who are bringing this country the type of shopping centres and office blocks that we could only have dreamed of when we sat watching Dallas in the late 70s.
It is curious too to see Frank McDonald being profiler-in-chief, and letting the petit bourgeoisie know what makes a good developer tick. McDonald up to now has been a bit of a lone voice when it comes to chronicling the debacle that is Irish urban planning, pointing out systematically how poor planning and bad government decision making has led to snaking traffic jams, the mushrooming of commuter belt suburbs without adequate amenities and poorly managed spiralling construction costs for public projects. But of course, there is no connection between property developers and government, so there’s no reason for him to make the connection, right?
But you may say: why shouldn’t the Irish Times profile these men in such an ‘in-depth’ way? They are changing the face of modern Ireland after all, and what is the Irish Times for but reviewing the ‘…times we live in’? Of course, a cynic would point to the acquisition of myhome.ie, the Irish property website for €50m (that is, €15m higher than the expected price) and suggest that the Irish Times have a significant financial stake in the Irish Property market. And the deeply cynical might point to the Sunday Independent business article on the 21st of October which rather gleefully (as you would expect) tells us:
“What looked like an aggressive move back then is now looking decidedly less sound, in its most recently filed accounts profits halved to just €750,229 post tax from €1.57m a year earlier. Pre-tax profits were also seriously dented coming in at only €1.12m from €1.7m a year earlier. Not only did the Irish Times pay top whack for myhome, it has also put some €1.4m in an ill fated investment in newaddresss.ie — a company that aims to take the pain out of moving home.
It spent some €700,000 acquiring the company just a year earlier and then pumped as much again into it. In July this year it sold the company to Tico, but the amount paid has not been revealed.”
To suggest that a paper’s editorial decision making is determined by its own commercial interests is a very strong accusation. A paper’s reputation, after all, is based on it being able to demonstrate its objectivity so that you can be sure that the news you read is accurate.
Which brings me to the good news about myhome.ie. It has won an award. And not any award but the Irish Times Property Advertising Awards 2007. And it won in the only category in which it was eligible, Myhome.ie Best Property Industry Website Award.
This isn’t a misprint, Myhome.ie won the Myhome.ie Best Property Industry Website Award at the Irish Times Property Advertising Awards 2007. Judging of the Awards was done, according to the application form which was required in order to be entered for an award:
“by a jury made up of members nominated by each of the seven organisations, The Irish Times, IAVI - Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute, IPAV - Institute of Professional Auctioneers & Valuers, CIF- Construction Industry Federation, IAPI - Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland, ICAD – Institute of Creative Advertising and Design and SCS - Society of Chartered Surveyers.”
The Irish Times article chronicling the awards itself is pretty hilarious. Tom Parlon, once Minister for State and PD now the director general, no less, of the Construction Industry Federation said that output next year could fall as low as 45,000 units. Thanks goodness he’s not a director general with his head in the sand. They have a good man there, I think you’ll agree.
But wait, he says more:
“We in the CIF hope to be wrong with these figures, but at present market conditions, that is what the output will be according to our members on the ground.”
Phew, I thought he was going to say something stupid there, something like, ‘if we play our cards right it can go up rather than down’.
Oh no, I was too quick to judge. He’s as dumb as I thought:
“It doesn’t have to be, of course. If confidence and common sense can be restored to the market, output next year will be substantially higher.”
[…]
“The €36 billion construction industry is crucial to the country’s economy”, he said.
No shit, Sherlock. Because of you and your cronies the country’s economy has become over reliant on the construction industry. And he also reveals what a pot of money is involved for the Irish Times with regard to the advertisement of Irish property:
“The many spin-off industries include the €155 million advertising sector, which is significantly ahead of sectors such as food, entertainment, motor, banking and recruitment, he said.”
So if you’re still wondering why the Irish Times are providing such breathy coverage of Irish Property Developers it should now be clear. They simply have no shame.
One final point. In the Sunday Independent article it said that “myhome is running into further controversy, blocking access to bloggers who have been compiling lists recording the steep falls in house prices over the past year. All names and prices are now embedded in images so programmers can no longer use the data to do automated trawls.”
Does anyone know who these bloggers are?
i do! i do!
http://www.irishpropertywatch.com/
A good site too, unless you’ve bought a house recently or anything, in which case you’d be well advised to stay away…
Well done, jza, straight to the top of the class. Actually, I’m very glad I’ve never heard about that site (and property pin and all the rest) before. Property prices are enough of a talking point out in the real world without having to deal with it on the Internet.
It is interesting though that myhome has blocked blogs like IPW from taking their data on the dropping of house prices. The reason though is not, as it would initially seem, to avoid a ‘talking down’ of the housing market. It is because they are using the data themselves in conjunction with the Ireland’s largest independent securities firm and leading provider of institutional equities, wealth management and corporate finance services, NCB. myhome data on house prices informs their Property Barometer http://www.ncb.ie/downloads/pdf/PropertyBarometerQ32007.pdf
[…] check the full story here […]
Yup..
http://www.arandomwalk.com/2007/09/23/myhome-running-scared/
http://www.irishpropertywatch.com/ has been compiling figures.
IPW and the Property Barometer provide two different things. The Barometer is collated set of figures whereas IPW gives individual figures for movements on specific properties. I trust the IPW figures because I can check them myself, I’m always wary of figures issued directly by those with a vested interest in “talking the market up”.
Thanks lads. As you ask in your post Keith, why is that “statistics from a couple of computer nerds and other amateurs are more reliable and timely than the “official” statistics”. Although its pretty obvious why really.
Frank McDonald is hardly gushing over the developers he is profiling. The one today on the Cosgrave Brothers refers to some of their developments as being variously “[a] humdrum piece of neo-classical pastiche”, “fussy-looking “, “Noddyland-style”, “disappointingly underscaled” and “perfectly pitched to nouveau riche aspirations”.
If this the I.T. sucking up, I’d hate to see them lay the boot in.
You could have at least quoted the sentence, pavement, instead of mix-and-matching.
“Although it is a humdrum piece of neo-classical pastiche, with five-storey blocks of smallish flats standing on stilts above basement car parking, it took a lot of courage to build in Gardiner Street at that time.”
And you could have quoted the entire paragraph, explaining why he used the word ‘courage’ about building in Gardiner St in 1992.
“Although it is a humdrum piece of neo-classical pastiche, with five-storey blocks of smallish flats standing on stilts above basement car parking, it took a lot of courage to build in Gardiner Street at that time. Certainly, no other developers were prepared to do so. After all, the junction with Seán MacDermott Street was known as “Handbag Corner” because of the dexterity of local thieves in snatching bags from cars while women drivers were stopped at the traffic lights. Custom Hall pioneered the regeneration of Gardiner Street, changing the image of the area.”
“If this the I.T. sucking up, I’d hate to see them lay the boot in.”
I think you’ll find the john rocca designed tan moccasin is in vogue in IT towers these years gone by now.
Fintan O’Toole on The Irish Times’ conflict of interest:
“MB - You have probably seen the documentary on RTE recently concerning the ‘looming’ property ‘landing’. While it was to a degree one sided; this was definitely something that needed to be said. Yet the next day there is an article in the Irish Independent asking why RTE was scaremongering - ‘RTE broadcasts fear in the market’.
FT - You are absolutely right about that. It was interesting that RTE did that. RTE are one of the few media outlets that don’t take property advertising. It’s not a simple one plus one equation, though it is undoubtedly true that if not the choice of subject, but the prominence that is given a certain subject has to be related to the direct interests of the media outlets themselves. There is no question that almost all of the Irish media for the last 10-15 years has had a crucial economic stake in a rising property market. Because property advertising is very lucrative and is a very important part of what makes the Irish media tick. It’s not that a newspaper like the Irish Times will not publish things that say ‘this is a bubble’. It has published a number of pieces and very authoritative pieces, but in a sense it’s where are those pieces going to appear. How are they related to the broader agenda, in terms of how we understand our society at the moment? So I’m not saying there is an absolute mechanical relationship between certain interests and what appears, but I am saying that the relationship exists. People need to understand this, it is not a council of despair - well you know there is nothing you can do about this. A critical understanding of how the media works is one in which people understand the kind of relationships that are involved and how to read and see that it is not necessarily an objective and accurate reflection of everything that is important to Irish society. ”
http://www.mediabite.org/article_The-Corporate-Media—Part-1_474268952.html
That great Dav, thanks. A very interesting interview.
I think O’Toole’s point about media not necessarily being ‘an objective and accurate reflection of everything that is important to Irish society’ is worth emphasising.
[…] my post on The Irish Times Gives Award to Itself Dav of mediabite.org, kindly left a link to a very interesting and wide-ranging interview that […]
[…] my post on The Irish Times Gives Award to Itself Dav of mediabite.org, kindly left a link to a very interesting and wide-ranging interview that […]
Good old Frank, safely ensconced in his nice little “batchelor” pad in Temple Bar. Funny, he declined to mention how MyHome.IE is not allowing us to make up our own mind about property trends by blocking access to blogger agents.
http://shazgood.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/myhomeie-bans-bloggers/
[…] construction industry and banking sector has by-passed the land speculators, mortgage pimps, and Irish Times entrepreneurs, and landed on the shoulders of those who’ve bought the over-priced, and in some cases, […]