Years before my job with The Ditch, I worked freelance for Irish and British magazines. The subjects I was assigned were often interesting, but putting together articles could be mechanical. You’d formulate your introduction and a paragraph summary of the story. You’d find one person who supported the general thrust of your piece, another with a (somewhat) dissenting perspective. You’d get quotes from both and sometimes, as a bonus, add a third voice whose opinion landed in the middle, giving an impression of impartiality.
You’d have to submit your story quickly once commissioned. There are economic reasons for this. First, publications have schedules to follow to ensure enough content is published to justify advertising sales. Second, you have limited resources and every hour spent on your current report is an hour not spent on the next. In a declining industry with shrinking rates of payment, you don’t have the luxury of agonising over your writing.
Given the constraints you’re up against, finding an interviewee to give comment can be tricky. You email but get no reply. Call several times and no answer. You’re afraid of the potential consequences of missing a deadline. You urgently need someone – someone with credentials, who knows what they’re talking about. That’s when you contact them: the Experts.
People employed by forums and institutes and think tanks are always happy to chat. And their lofty titles – visiting scholar, research fellow or, better yet, distinguished fellow – confer authority. This spares overburdened journalists the bother of closely checking whether their claims are accurate. Experts allow journalists to outsource portions of their reporting, to renounce responsibility, like a company hiring a consultant to make its decisions.
You can’t criticise me – I am merely telling you what an Expert said.
Along with well-funded government and corporate press offices, Experts can be activated on short notice. They often are. Journalists eager for a few words on fiscal matters, readers of broadsheets like the Irish Times might’ve noticed, will get in touch with a place like the Institute of International & European Affairs. For housing or infrastructure, they might call Progress Ireland. On foreign direct investment, the Economic and Social Research Institute has plenty to say. Outlets keen to reduce labour costs base entire segments around expertise. Are our house prices now at boiling point? Four Experts give their views. Amid a rising tide of cyber regulation, Experts have their say. Wondering what music to listen to this year? Experts will let you know.
Whatever the topic, however serious or frivolous, an Expert is available.
Experts = apologists for power
Who could object to such an arrangement? Both parties benefit: journalists uphold their professional duties by deferring to a person with greater specialised knowledge; the Expert gets exposure, building profiles for themselves and their organisations.
One issue, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman said in Manufacturing Consent, is that Experts tend to align with power. And those who hear them are rarely, if ever, told what commitments, both monetary and ideological, shape their analyses.
In one case study featured in the book its authors looked at how many “experts” appeared on a single show – the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, which ran on PBS from 1983 to 1985. Excluding journalists, 54 percent of guests were past or former government officials, while 15.4 percent worked for think tanks. A majority of the latter came from the Georgetown Centre for Strategic Studies, an entity that counted conservative foundations and corporations as financial backers and “provided a revolving door between the State Department and CIA and a nominally private organisation.”
Chomsky and Herman’s dissection of mass media can help us understand an Irish press that enjoys the same relationship with Experts.
And in Ireland, there is no issue more riddled with Experts than “defence”. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, we’ve listened to the same cabal of academics, all brandishing identical talking points about emerging threats and changing realities. Last Saturday, in an article typical of the genre, members of this cohort stated, sternly, that we as a country are now faced with an “uncomfortable strategic question” about the “limits” of neutrality.
“Ireland made a bet on peace and globalisation that worked phenomenally well, but this only works in times of stability. Now it needs to think about providing security,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told John Mooney of The Times. Whenever “the Russian navy turns up in Irish waters, it reminds the world of how vulnerable Ireland actually is”.
John O’Brennan, professor of European politics at NUI Maynooth, agreed. “Ireland has eroded its own capacity for self-defence to the point where it is now one of the most exposed states in Europe,” he said, adding that Ireland has no national security strategy – a document which, by identifying external threats, may make the masses amenable to increased military spending, research from the British Journal of Political Science indicates.
“It is just extraordinary that this is not an immediate and urgent priority,” Ben Tonra, of the UCD School of Politics and International Relations, told the Examiner, referring to its delayed release. Edward Burke, assistant professor in the history of war at UCD, said “the development of coherent mechanisms for the identification and direction of national security priorities at the top of government must be an absolute priority for any state”.
There is no suggestion any of those interviewed are acting improperly or that their work is directed by intelligence in the manner described by Chomsky and Herman's Georgetown Centre example.
All however are part of networks that engage with the state on defence and security police. Several are affiliated with groups that receive support from entities with vested interests in larger defence budgets. These affiliations are necessary context for their commentary. The Atlantic Council last year took more than $1 million from the US Department of Defense, while O' Brennan was previously a research fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies, the EU's think tank on defence policy. Tonra meanwhile, as director of the Irish Defence and Security Association, has lobbied defence officials on behalf of international arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and facilitated talks between Ukrainian military officials and Irish businesses in the hope of forging commercial relationships. Burke has a position at the Azure Forum, a think tank linked to the defence industry that wants further Irish integration into NATO.
Readers were not informed of these connections.
‘Ireland is highly conformist’
This isn’t to say journalists should never speak to Experts. Doing so is often warranted.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the constant broadcasting of medical expertise was justified: doctors and virologists and epidemiologists had knowledge we all needed. Yet even here, journalistic conventions caused problems. Scientific evidence was routinely presented alongside the views of hoteliers, restaurateurs or business lobbyists. All parties were presented as authorities, with the implication that each was equally worthy of your attention.
Which brings us to another matter: what, exactly, is an Expert, by what metric does one determine what expertise is worthy of consultation – and who gets to make the decision?
You could say an Expert is a person who has acquired a certain amount of knowledge about something. In that case, are scientists behind the three percent of papers that deny climate change to be granted the same platform? Homeopaths and chiropractors have undoubtedly learned a lot, should they have a role in public discourse? What about revisionist historians who deny the Holocaust or flat earthers who spend their days mapping imaginary geographies?
I suspect most journalists would say, no, such people shouldn’t be asked for their thoughts. We can conclude therefore that only certain kinds of expertise warrant consideration. But which?
A document uploaded by Dublin Inquirer last July is instructive. In a pitch to potential investors, Progress Ireland – a think tank supported by the billionaire Collison brothers that has successfully lobbied for further deregulation of the housing market – described the dynamics of Irish public debate.
“Ireland is highly conformist and is more prone to deference to elite or expert consensus than our British counterparts,” the document reads. “Climbing the respectability/credibility hierarchy is a process that will have increasing returns as we go.” Progress Ireland staff have since established themselves as Experts. They did so by conforming to certain professional norms and using language that sounds forward-thinking. By presenting themselves as Serious Guys.
The truth is it doesn't particularly matter whether Experts are correct, or qualified, or advocating rebranded policies lifted from the extreme right-wing Cato institute, so long as they don't stray beyond certain parameters set by power.
No one cares, for instance, that the Institute for International and European Affairs’ chief economist Dan O’Brien said in 2019 that “the worst of the housing crisis is over” – he’s still rolled out to discuss solutions to it. Stick around, flatter wealth and before you know it, you’ll have a slot on Newstalk or a column in a broadsheet.
Having an ‘open and honest’ discussion
Ultimately Experts give journalists a kind of cover. Their imprimatur convinces casual readers and viewers and listeners – people who are themselves overworked in the same way journalists are, who don't have the energy to scrutinise the credibility of pundits – that they’ve done their due diligence. Mostly they haven’t.
The media perennially demands open and honest conversations about issues of importance like immigration, housing or defence. But for such conversations to take place we need to know who is participating in them.
That means explaining why certain opinions appear consistently while others are marginalised and what determines which Experts get platformed. Because without the public knowing why the terms of any debate are framed a certain way, they can't fully take part in it.
The media should at least inform audiences who funds their sources and when those funders are likely to benefit from the positions being advocated. It won't fix the profession – the biggest flaws of which are inextricably linked to structural incentives and class – but it would give the public tools to figure out who's actually talking to them.
That seems a reasonable minimum editorial standard.
