State funding can raise tricky questions for the independence of the media, according to observers in the media itself, academia and politics.
“Is it okay for news media to take money from the Government? Instinctively, the answer is no,” says Tom Felle, former head of the journalism department at the University of Galway and a professor of journalism at the college.
But such a stance doesn’t reflect the reality society finds itself in, he adds.
Advertising revenue that once funded independent local and national media has migrated to social media platforms, creating a crisis not just for journalism, but for liberal democracy generally, with a sharp decline in coverage of courts, local councils and other areas of public life in recent decades.
In response, the Government, through the media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán (CnaM), is now channelling significant sums of money to local and national media to support news reporting.
In the most recent funding round, announced in January, more than €15 million was contained in funding offers for 2026, with CnaM allocating money that comes to it by way of annual budgetary decisions by the Government.
“It is not a perfect solution, but it is a solution,” says Felle, one of a number of media experts engaged to assess funding applications for the schemes run by CnaM.
Although the final decision is made by the regulator, in practice the decisions of the assessors are only reviewed to ensure they comply with such matters as process and governance, says Rónán Ó Domhnaill, media development commissioner with the regulator.
The latest funding offers come under a variety of schemes, including news reporting, local government reporting, court reporting and a “digital transformation” scheme.
About €3 million is ring-fenced for the commercial radio sector and the same again for Virgin Media Television to support additional current affairs coverage.
Mediahuis Ireland, publisher of the Irish Independent, the Herald, and 11 regional titles, and The Irish Times Group, publisher of The Irish Times (though The Irish Times itself has not submitted an application for funding), the Irish Examiner, the Echo and six regional titles, each received funding offers of more than €1.2 million.
Other recipients of offers included Iconic Media Group, a UK-based owner of Irish regional titles and digital sites (€236,940); the Irish Farmers Journal (€94,000); Hot Press (€144,811); Gay Community News (€14,107); TheJournal.ie (€54,833); South Belfast News/Andytown News/North Belfast News (€70,000); the Bauer Media Group – owner of Newstalk, 98FM, Today FM, and other stations – (€382,074); and Kilkenny-based KCLR 96FM (€107,369).
The regulator targets sectors identified as requiring support in the 2022 report of the Future Media Commission, according to Jane Suiter, a professor of political communications at the School of Communications in Dublin City University.
“You couldn’t have the Government giving money directly to the media, so you have it going via the Coimisiún,” she says.
“So it all rests on how independent is Coimisiún na Meán.”
Professor Jane Suiter does not believe the new funding arrangements need necessarily damage trust. Photo Sam Boal/Irish Times
Because it is public money, the funding is subject to the laws and regulations that govern the granting of public money to private companies and individuals. The money must be used for reporting that would not occur otherwise.
Mostly the funding is used for extra staff to cover areas not already being covered. It is CnaM policy, according to Ó Domhnaill, to direct much of the money into journalists’ pockets.
The media outlets are not allowed put the funded reporting behind a paywall and after a period all the work funded by CnaM is available via a portal on the regulator’s website.
Suiter does not believe the new funding arrangements need necessarily damage trust in the independence of the media.
“Government funding for TV and radio has gone on for years,” she says. “Do people not trust RTÉ? They do.”
The key issue is that CnaM be seen as transparent and fair, she says.
For both Suiter and Felle, any danger that may exist from introducing Government funding is outweighed by the danger of Ireland developing “news deserts”, as has happened in the US.
“Cities and towns and states [in the US] in some case no longer have any media, or are down to practically none, with maybe one left,” says Felle.
“There is certainly a real danger at local level … in Ireland, of news deserts.”
The development of areas of public life, including local democracy and court sittings, where the level of reporting has become sharply reduced, is a trend that countries across Europe are determined to resist, he says.
“You lose the capacity for the public to discuss the issues, whatever they are,” he says.
“What replaces that, at the benign level, is rumour, but at the more sinister level [is] far-right capture of areas and … really serious impacts on the ability of democracy to function.”
One of the aims of the CnaM funding is to combat misinformation by funding professional journalism, says Ó Domhnaill.
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He points out that misinformation is “a difficult thing to solve” but one tool to prevent it is to “try to flood the market with news that is factually checked, that is done by a journalist on the ground, that has an editor”, he says.
Mediahuis, one of the largest publishers of regional and local news in Ireland, says most of the funding it has received from CnaM is used to meet the costs of employing additional journalists at a local level.
“We have made it explicit – and An Coimisiún has accepted – that our journalism will always be entirely independent,” it says in a statement.
Within The Irish Times Group, the decision to seek funding rests with each group publication.
The editor of The Irish Times, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, says the title had chosen to date not to seek funding from Coimisiún na Meán or the Global Ireland Media Challenge Fund, a Department of Foreign Affairs scheme that supports coverage of international affairs.
“News media face formidable commercial challenges. The weakening of the business model for local journalism in particular raises real questions about access to information and scrutiny of public institutions – two pillars of the democratic system,” says Mac Cormaic.
“I think the State can play a role indirectly in supporting public-interest journalism and that can be done in a way that preserves editorial independence and the perception of it.”
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín is among those with concerns about the potential downsides of public funding of the media.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín has expressed concerns. Photograph: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos
“There is a worry that if the media becomes dependent on State funding, it may give governments subtle influence over editorial direction or risk creating an environment of soft censorship,” he says.
Aontú, he says, believes in a strong and robust media, but State funding “could have a chilling effect in relation to free political discourse in this country”.
Among those who received funding offers in January is the small independent publication, the Dublin InQuirer. It successfully applied for financial support to hire two reporters and conduct a particular project, resulting in three respective offers of €47,895, €43,495, and €12,400.
Sam Tranum, editor of The Dublin InQuirer. Photo: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times
A similar application was made last year, and made use of, but the publication has decided not to take up all of the 2026 offer and instead use CnaM funding for one reporter and the special project.
The reason for this, according to editor Sam Tranum, is concern about the effect of too much reliance on CnaM funding as against producing material readers are willing to pay to access.
In order to build sustainable journalism “we need to have our independent income streams and the best one to have is subscribers”, says Tranum.
“If the money is coming from subscribers, we are serving readers and producing stuff they want to read – and it is like a virtuous cycle and our interests align with our readers.”
Initially he believed CnaM funding would be a good fit for his publication, but then he found that larger competitors were using Government funding to produce reporting that was in direct competition with what the InQuirer was doing, and making it freely available online.
I can see how somebody might naturally self-censor
— Sam Tranum
Last year, Tranum wrote a letter to CnaM, criticising the effect of the regulator’s funding scheme on his publication. He told The Irish Times that he said in his letter to the commission that while their funding had many merits, he would prefer “if they didn’t exist”.
“They are very nice people and it is well run … but the end result is in the medium to long term they are undermining our ability to be a sustainable business based on competition and also funding competition against us where there wasn’t any before,” he says.
Tranum believes there is always a risk that journalists who are being funded by the Government or through grants will end up allowing that fact influence their work.
This may occur because their focus is on pleasing the grant-giving body rather than the reader. But it could also affect reporting in other ways.
“I can see how somebody might naturally self-censor because they’re worried that they’re going to apply [for a] grant, they might apply for it and not get it … That just seems like a natural thing.”
Ó Domhnaill is far from dismissive of the concerns some express about State funding of the media.
“In an ideal situation, support for the industry would not be necessary,” he says.
“But support is necessary.”