Community media is battling a democratic deficit, says Colm Croffy

Losing local media outlets deprives citizens of their most important source of local news, and any reader of local newspapers can attest to the decline in local content.

This is dangerous because people need access to accurate and substantive information about their local communities to participate as citizens.

Local newspapers cover all the ‘boring bits’ of weekly fodder – district courts, local authority meetings, coroners’ courts, planning appeals, public consultations, regional assemblies, hospital reports, policing and so on.

When I started my reporting career in a local Limerick newspaper in 1989, we left out more material from local institutional activity than we could publish weekly – there was so much of it .

Back in the closing stages of the last century, official minutes and reports had to be posted or hand-delivered five days in advance of council meetings. Intrepid reporters tracked down a favourite councillor to get a sneak preview. It was a different world.

For the past 14 years, I have been a very busy founding editor of a local community bi-monthly, 64-page magazine – ‘Ballinasloe LIFE’. It goes out to a print readership of over 12,500 and an online community of 10,000. It is made possible through the support of a gracious business community, and with no public funding, we deliver 6,000 copies to our community six times a year for FREE.

During that time I have witnessed a growing intolerance, disdain or indifference ( I can’t quite fathom) for allowing the local community access to their public business-making.

After we lost our Town Council, it took about three years of huffing and puffing to get a seat on the press bench to attend the new Municipal District Council (MDC) meetings. We are circularised the call to meetings and the agendas, but have no access to the draft minutes or any of the reports that are formally issued and approved by the council members. The preparatory meetings held in camera (in private) take twice as long as the formal public meetings.

I thought it was just our particular swamp in East Galway, but no, across the River Suck in Roscommon and Westmeath it is similar. There is more information in the votes of sympathies lists from official minutes than on the substantive elements on the agenda. GDPR is the brave shield that most officials hide behind.

I would like to cover aspects of my community’s involvement with the HSE, but as we are not official media we have no access to the minutes and agendas of the Area Health Representative Committee. Ditto the Border, Midland and Western Regional Assembly, and the joint policing committee.

From time to time I have to check facts with these public democratic bodies – most are two-to-three years behind in their annual reports. It’s the same with qualitative data; there are three sets of figures for the housing list in my MDC area alone – according to officials.

No one in my community knows how much it costs run a MDC because the estimates (budget) meetings are held in private, separate from the main meetings of the council and no-one, not even some of the elected reps (I am learning now) fully understand how this occurs.

Given all that, I welcomed a sobering report published by Maynooth University in December of last year titled ‘The 21st Century Councillor in Irish Local Government’. However, while it rightly savaged public discourse on social media, it was noticeably quiet on the role of community media.

I was more encouraged with our new Media Development Commissioner Rónán Ó Domhnaill’s remarks to the CRAOL (Community Radio Ireland) gathering in Athlone at year end (Changing Ireland, Winter 2023) where he bravely articulated the new emerging vision for Comisiún na Meán and how they would be prioritising the ‘Local Democracy Reporting Scheme” .

I very much hope he and his colleagues and the members of Association of Irish Local Government will reach out to community-owned, resourced media in delivering on this much-needed approach.