RTÉ’s Cathy Halloran on the evolution of journalism, the rise of social media, and the future of public service broadcasting in a digital era.
The transformation of public service broadcasting in Ireland in the digital era was the focus of a recent seminar at the University of Limerick. Cathy Halloran shared her insights on working in the media.
Halloran, who has worked as RTÉ’s Midwest Correspondent for over 30 years, has covered major events in Limerick and beyond, from the Don Tidey kidnapping to the beef tribunal. She has also reported on high-profile occasions, including Mary Robinson’s state visits. Now, as she prepares to retire in May, she reflects on the evolution of journalism and the challenges public service media faces today.
Speaking to students in UL’s Media Challenges in the Digital Age seminar series, Halloran discusses how the rapid shift from traditional to digital media has reshaped the industry. She highlights the growing difficulty of maintaining journalistic integrity in an era where misinformation spreads quickly on social media.
The changing media landscape
Halloran begins by acknowledging how media has drastically changed due to social media becoming mainstream, a platform for all types of communications and how big social media platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, became huge competitors for public service broadcasting.
“YouTube used to be our biggest challenger in competition. Now it’s just social media—Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok,” she says.
She notes how the younger generations use social media platforms to access their news material, such as TikTok, rather than national news platforms like RTE News and the Irish Times. As a result of the digital age trends, she explains how it is “revolutionary” that social media has changed the way of delivering news as it is more accessible to access news through the form of shorts, podcasts, and live posts.
Challenges of public service broadcasting in the digital age
One of the biggest challenges of public service broadcasting in the digital age, she explains, is that news delivery has rapidly changed the deadline and news immediacy in the newsroom.
“At news immediacy, my first deadline when I started back in the 1980s in RTE was quarter to six. A quarter to six in the evening was my first headline. I had the whole day to do a story.
“Now my deadline for my headline is yesterday. There isn’t enough time to get whatever you are writing up there and that’s one of the biggest challenges, personally or professionally, is how quick you can write, how quick you can get stuff up.”
She points out how people want news immediately rather than waiting for the one or six o’clock news on RTE News, shifting their priority to online news rather than broadcasting. This, she says, has led to the decline of traditional news bulletins.
“We might not have them by 2030. The age of the news bulletin at one o’clock, six o’clock and nine o’clock is dying,” Halloran predicts, “but it’s a very slow death, and people are still watching the bulletin, but we’re still getting half a million people watching”
She reveals how the COVID-19 crisis made the viewership shoot through the roof due to the trust in the broadcast for seeking information about the pandemic figures or the regular news.
Before concluding the seminar, Halloran showed the equipment she used to report for RTE, ranging from a reel-to-reel tape recorder and VHS tapes between the 1980s and 1990s to cameras and smartphones in the current times.
Advice for journalists
Halloran provides key advice to the seminar attendees, highlighting why tone is important in news delivery, depending on the article’s topic, as it can’t be a happy tone if reporting on a crime piece.
“Tone is very important to the delivery of content,” she explains. “You have to get the right depending on what you’re talking about, the tone is fine if you’re talking about something nice. If it’s talking about the death of a child, it’s a totally different tone.”
She stresses the importance of getting the tone right when reporting a particular article, as it can affect how the reader perceives the journalist’s intentions. She says that journalists’ words matter in their news, such as if the news material is accurate and not nonfactual.
“What I write matters, what you write matters—don’t forget this line. Your words matter; choose them carefully,” she says.