19/04/2012 Hearts and Minds

Hello and welcome to Hearts and Minds. Coming up on the programme:

David Ford prepares for his party conference amid what he calls

growing anger at the loss of an executive seat. Raising the UUP

from the depths. Is Mike the man? As the telly shrinks to one edition,

we examine the fate of newspapers in a digital world.

The Alliance Party gathers this weekend for its annual shindig but

there are stirrings of discontent in the ranks. The leader himself

talks about the party's anger about the abolishment of the Department

of Education and Learning. Justice Minister, welcome to the

programme. Surely the party council refusing

to put you forward for the job would be the greatest case of

cutting off your nose to spite your face? I think we have to look at

what the situation is. The Minister for Employment and unlearning has

been doing a good job, yet we have to cut a key department at a

significant time of difficulty. That looks like - towards us or

vandalism towards the department. We need to do it in a senseable way

not chopping off. If it wasn't your seat that was at risk... It wasn't.

The party seat. The fundamental part about it is last year we got

an increase in the Assembly backed up by a significant increase in

votes. As a result of that we got an entitlement of one seat.

bring you from seven to eight. got the entitlement to one out of

ten. It is now proposed to fix the constitution to take away that

entitlement. So there need to be guarantees given to how the issue

will be handled for our other department if that is to happen. I

don't believe we should be abolishing it at this point. I

think we should be looking at a sensible rationalisation of all

departments. We don't need to carve up DEL between the Sinn Fein and

the DUP departments which was the original proposal. Those things

should be discussed rationally, not just an attempt to do us down.

it rational for your party to say we're just going to take our ball

away and our other Minister away if you don't play the way we want to?

What's rational about that? It's entirely rational for to us say if

we don't have the opportunity to contribute in the way the

electorate said we should have that opportunity, that's our position.

You still have one seat. You couldn't ever claim you were

underrepresented. No. We made a specific - whoever was elected the

Minister - it wasn't necessarily going to be an Alliance Minister -

so that the proportions worked out right. That was a sensible way of

adapting to it. That wasn't us seeking extra representation. We're

saying we want proportionate entitlements guaranteed the same as

any other party has theirs guaranteeed. Even if the seat is

appointed in a different way? It is an electoral process a part of the

electoral system whereas your appointment as Justice Minister is

a cross-community appointment, not the first thing, is it And the

Deputy First Minister and Junior Ministers are appointed differently.

We have four different ways of appointing Ministers. We should

have had proportionality all the way through.

If you say "I want guarantees that I'm going to have security of

tenure and if I don't get those, I am going to resign," that seems

nonsensical. No. What would be the point in any Minister remaining

when they have shown they can rig the constitution to remove my

colleague? Why would I remain to be removed at whatever point they

choose to move me? Why do you say rigging the constitution? It's a

reorganisation which you yourself say is sensible. No. It's the start

of a process. No, it's not the start of a process. The process

should be an all-inclusive process which would look to make the eight

departments we need come together on the same timescale with a

rational process to deliver, not on a whim decide to abolish one

department. What would happen if the Ulster Unionists worked away to

vote away the Assembly or the Executive? Would they have to scrap

another department because that would be a way of ensuring they

removed our entitlement then? This is not a rational or sensible

process. This is simply vandalism. I come back to it, though - it's

not possible that your party would - your party council would say

we'll not put David Ford forward - it's stupid, isn't it? It would be

entirely possible if there is no option for an Alliance Minister to

carry out Alliance policies in a key department - if you're left

there as a prisoner of other people - it would be back to what they

were attempting to impose on us in the first place. I didn't accept

that there would be guaranteed of how the process would work. If that

agreement is being torn up, there are serious questions as to whether

I should remain. Some say you have already shown yourself to be a

prisoner because when Peter Robinson said you - they were going

to abolish prison systems you backtracked. I didn't. If you

apologised to anyone for the way you phrased something in the

Assembly. I simply talked about what had gone on before my watch in

the Prison Association and the NAO. Which you said was an operational

matter? It was at that time. That was the way it was being discussed

operationally. It's clear if you look at the information which was

discussed to Jim Alastair under FOI I said this was not the time to be

tinkering with emblems because there were fundamental issues of

reform around the Prison Service which were more important... They

were saying you were a prisoner of the DUP - Sinn Fein alliance.

People said a lot of other things whether Peter Robinson should

threaten to resign over a cap badge. You talked about the Alliance

election. You gained one seat and 14 seats at council level. But you

had talked before that at last party's conference about making a

breakthrough. You had hoped to get a lot more seats than that.

never hoped to get a lot more seats. A few more. We were a couple of

others - there were a couple of others we were within a whisker of

getting. What we got was what we set - Mance through the proportion

system - an entitlement to a Minister under the current rules

that operate. That was a significant step forward for a

party which hadn't been in that position under the three previous

elections. While others had been going down, we were going up.

you didn't do as you'd hoped you would do. I am asking if you have

peaked. How many more Ministers than two did you think we were

expecting? I have no idea. You might have liked ten. You talked

about getting... We talked about... A breakthrough in a number of areas

that didn't happen. That's my point. We talked about getting a second

Minister, and we got one. We talked about a significant increase in

votes, and we got a 50% increase in votes. We talked about a

significant increase in councillors and got a 50% increase in

councilors. We talked about getting two or three gains. We actually got

one and had two very narrow misses. Where is the growth to come from?

You didn't grow at all west of the ban which was another prophesy you

made. In half of Northern Ireland we had a third of the party in or

around greater Belfast. We have seats in places like Coleraine and

Craig avenueon, half of west of the Ban, Banbridge, Ballymena. Place we

weren't represented before we are represented. We also fought

campaigns seriously in a number of other places, like in Scone. That

was a sign of a party motivated to put workers on the streets. Indeed,

it was those votes and those western and southern constituencies

which helped guarantee Stephen Ferry's seat at the executive table.

With your Justice Minister hat on and the Prime Minister and a

hundred plus MPs have said they're not happy with the Attorney General

taking action against Peter Hain over scandalising the court with

remarks he made in his autobiography. Do you think David

Cameron is right that this is a wasted, foolish action? I think the

way in which Peter Hain referred to the actions of a judge with which

he disagreed were inappropriate in the way he did it. The precise

legal actions the Attorney General is taking I can't comment on.

You're a politician. I say to you I am a politician... David Cameron

has come out and said it's wrong. Last year I signed warrants to

appoint a number of QCs. Some of those I appointed had taken part in

the campaign against the legal aid reforms I was making. I must say in

almost the same terminology as Peter Hain used, I thought there

was a certain irony about it as I signed the warrant to appoint them

but didn't ring up the Lord Chancellor and said, "Can I get out

of this" I thought there was a job to be done. You support the action

of the Attorney General? No, I said specifically there a few minutes

ago... I'm not sure what you said. Explain it for me. Maybe if you

stopped interrupting... If you would explain it for me more

carefully. I said I am not a lawyer and I don't understand the precise

legal challenge. I am not sure the 120 MPs are lawyers. They have

taken a position. I am asking you to. You're actually interrupting me

again, Noel! I made it quite clear I was not a lawyer and couldn't go

into the detail of what the Attorney General was saying. I also

made it quite clear that I can understand what appeared to me as a

politician to be the inappropriate way in which not simply an initial

decision by a judge but a behaviour as a judge was called into

question... Understanding it tells me you don't support the action of

Hain or not... For the third time... You said you understood it. You

didn't say you supported or opposed it. For the third time I'll say, I

am not a lawyer. I don't know the detail of the legal action that the

Attorney General is taking, so I am not going to say whether the legal

action is correct or not. As some people might say you should, but

we'll leave it there. No, I have no responsibility to the Attorney

General, Noel, and I shouldn't have any responsibility to the Attorney

General, so there is no reason why as Minister of Justice I should.

You might have an interest in it but you clearly don't. I have made

it clear I have an interesting, but I also have no direct legal

responsibility for it. Perhaps if you would represent what I said, it

would help. Thank you. Just as Titanic fatigue threatens

to set in, reports come in of another Belfast flagship going down.

Tomorrow night another evening edition of the Belfast Telegraph

will slip beneath the surface of the icey waters that is publishing

and settle on the sea floor of journalistic history. Built in 1870,

the grand old lady once believed to be unsinkable ran into massive

competition from electronic media and suffered irreparable damage as

a result. Job losses seem inevitable. For those of us who

grew up with the newspaper dropping through the post every day, it's

sad news. News is now electronic, instant and free.

Meanwhile, the UUP, who once ruled the waves here before their own

tragic night to remember in their own tragic election of 2005 is

determined to make a comeback. Raising the Titanic springs to mind.

Mike Nesbitt has persuaded the party leader to return as chairman

in the hope his political experience along with Mike's media

know-how will see the UUP resurface as a major player. Mr Nesbitt is

still somewhat of an unknown quantity politically but Ulster

Unionists have not necessarily suffered from a glut of charismatic

leaders in the past. Having the ability to talk to a TV camera

without looking like he was facing a major firing squad is a step

forward. In the early days, Stormont was a bit like a toddler

learning to walk - a few uncertain steps followed by collapse into

sectarian politics again. Despite the economic gloom, there are

encouraging signs of a more confident, responsibility approach

to Government. This Assembly that now embarks on trade missions to

the Middle East and India and fosters closer ties with China is

light years away from its bad old days of sectarian squabbling and

infantile name calling which passed for politics here. There is

evidence we're eventually beginning to recognise our assets. We have

discovered natural gas, and the Assembly is considering giving

Lochgilphead, the largest fresh water lake in the UK into public

ownership. Water is something we take for granted here, but as the

drought in Britain becomes acute, it may become our greatest asset.

Perhaps the day is coming that every day it rains, it rains

pennies from heaven. Good night.

Now, read all about it - during the morning at least. The demise of the

afternoon edition of the Belfast Telegraph is the latest sign of

decline in the newspaper industry, which it seems is under assault

from all sides. Vital advertising income is under threat with the

Assembly threatening to remove its adverts from all our local dailies.

Julia Paul reports. # Extra, extra

# Read all about it # Once upon a time, the newspaper was

king of the media. Thousands bought a paper on the way to work, and the

evening paper on the way home. Of course, this being Northern Ireland,

each community had to have its own newspaper, and when it came to

advertising Government jobs or public notices, by law they had to

appear in all three. But now we get our news and our job adverts from a

variety of sources. Newspaper circulation has been falling for

decades, yet it still costs �4.5 million a year for the Government

to advertise in our three main daily newspapers, and the Executive

says that's lot of taxpayers' money. The Government has already reduced

its entire advertising bill from �18 million a year to �12 million.

But the Executive wants to go further. It plans to open up

classified advertising to competition, to change the

legislation so public notices could be advertised on the internet and

to introduce tighter controls on campaign advertising, like the road

safety adverts on TV and radio. Not surprisingly, the newspaper editors

aren't happy. It costs a reasonable amount of money but I wouldn't say

a huge amount of money. We see what the Government spend on consultants

and in many other areas. Essentially what they're doing is

purchasing a valuable service from the newspapers which provide this

very extensive platform for the Government to get their message

across. If this happens, it will be a tremendous blow to the quality of

our papers and our journalism because we rely upon that to pay

the salaries, really, of those who work for us and who put the issues

of local democracy out into the public eye. You know, it's almost

being put across as if it's a charity case. This advertising

works. You know, let's not beat around the bush here. This

advertising actually works, and when you put a Government

advertisement - be that a job or a public notice - people see it. They

see it because they trust the titles. Meanwhile, the National

Union of Journalists is worried the move could mean job losses.

estimate that was done by some of the newspapers themselves was that

if these new measures for Government advertising were to be

introduced, then we could see maybe a fifth of the current titles in

Northern Ireland disappearing overnight, and there would

therefore be a risk that there could be maybe over 500 jobs at

risk altogether, and that would include some not directly connected

with newspapers. It's public money paying for these

adverts, and in the current climate, this is hard to justify. But if

classified advertising goes out to tender, the NUJ says that process

needs to be transparent and free from political influence. From what

I'm hearing, there are some journalists who feel that they are

being bullied in their newspapers to tow the line in a certain

political direction and in the way they're covering stories and that

the threat is hanging over them that if they don't give favorable

coverage on certain political stories that maybe their papers are

likely to lose out when it comes to those contracts for Government

advertising. The Executive denies any

accusations of putting pressure on newspapers. From my own experience,

I have had no direct involvement or direct pressure put upon myself,

but in conversation with colleagues and with other journalists, some of

those people certainly would believe that pressure has been

applied and a big stick has been wielded in that way over this issue.

I think there is plenty of criticism from politicians of the

Belfast Telegraph every day, every week, frankly, but clearly in a

small country where there is this patronage of that amount of money,

it could lead to the suspicion - let's just say as much as that -

that might happen. I am sure there is great maturity in the corridors

of power at Stormont. I am sure that's the last message Peter

Robinson and Martin McGuinness would want to go out. But I am sure

they'd want to go through with their advisors the consequences of

what this could all mean because we're not here to provide a PR

service for the Government. They have 161 press officers who do a

very good job for them in that respect. We're here to report to

our readers, but also to reflect the difficulties that'll inevitably

come along in public life. While it's a long time since the heyday

of the newspaper, there are still around 60 titles in Northern

Ireland, but one former editor says competition from the internet is a

major challenge for journalism. Anybodys, every ordinary citizen,

should be really worried about the demise of journalism, that this

trend is producing. You know, the big problem we've got at the moment

is we've got newspapers - news information coming on to

multiplatforms - on to the internet without actually having a means to

derive proper revenue from that. That's a crisis for journalism.

It's a crisis for newspapers, but it's a crisis to which at the

moment nobody has found an answer. Julia Paul reporting.

Difficult as it might be for people of a certain generation to imagine

a world without the rustle of news print, there are plenty of prophets

of doom foreseeing that world in a not-too-distance future. Can the

hard copy be saved? We have two guests with us. Do you lie awake at

night wondering how you're going to arrest the decline of newspapers?

Lots of things keep me awake. I think newspapers cannot only

survive but prosper in a changing world. We have to accept there is

less people out there reading newspaper, but there is less people

out there watching mainstream TV and less people going out to vote,

so there are changes we have to cope with. There are less people

reading the Irish newspapers than 25 years ago or five years ago. We

have a loyal audience. Newspapers hold a special role in people's

affections, but also have a very definitive role to play in terms of

examining the news - examining features, looking at sport and

business and other -- which other areas aren't necessarily equipped

to do. It may be an increasingly mature readership which isn't

necessarily a bad thing, but people will turn to a newspaper. They may

not have as much time as they did previously. The economics may have

to change, but people have been predicting the demise of the

newspapers since the wireless was invented. Do you think that the

industry has a plan? Yes, I do. It's a matter of the role of the

newspapers. That's what the publishers have to work out is what

their role is going to be going forward. I'm confident there's role

for print, but you've got to work out what it's going to be, what

it's going to contribute, and where does it fit into the readers'

lives? I am confident they can do that. But in a world of digital

media, with mobile platforms, whatever they are, getting more and

more important, where is that newspaper moment going to be, do

you think? I think it's going to be in breadth and depth. If you look

at the newspapers today or local newspapers - Irish news included -

there are storys there which maybe didn't even touch in terms of

headlines last night on broadcast media, but are there in detail and

print this morning, like car parking charges explained in great

detail in several of the papers today - and I think that's an add-

on that readers will want. So I think the online and the breaking

news developments could actually be harnessed to drive people to print

the next day, which is a change around from where we have been

before. Alan, do you think these men are dinosaurs? No, I think we

all kind of work in the same kind of ecosystem. There is a certain

amount of bloggers that rely on newsprint in the same way they rely

on radio and TV as well to talk about and commentate on what others

are saying. And stories that come out on blogs first will then be

picked up by journalists who actually have the time to look into

a story. It's interesting the things that'll appear on my blog

and will actually make it into the newspapers or radio programmes

within a couple of days and develop into a proper story with a bit more

detail and rigour. One of the elements is trust, of course. The

great institutions from the New York Times, the Irish Times, the

Irish News, the Newsletter, these are institutions people trusted.

How did - or how can people trust a blogger? I think trust is earned.

It's over time either by reputation or by just the quality of what you

do and the fact it chimes with people. They agree with it, then

they start to trust. If other - within blogs, a lot of people tend

to refer to each other, and that builds a kind of network of trust

and a network of accountability to each other as well. People online

are very quick to say, that's rubbish or wrong. It's very fast

for them to comment back - slightly harder for a newspaper to be

critiqueed except maybe in the letters page. How much of an eye do

you keep on the blogs? How much do you think there is an actual

matching of interests? We do our level best. Certainly I spend a lot

of time going through different websites. I see his blogs. They

have lot of credibility because they're researched. He takes a lot

of care and attention in what he does. Not everybody does. There is

a contrast there with newspapers. We have a lot to learn from the

instant opinions which are out there, but the more reflective

approach is also very important to us among our columnists and news

reporters. I think newspapers do still set the agenda in many ways.

The broadcasters will follow up many, many stories which first

appear in newspapers. Some of the things we do in particularly health,

particularly education, particularly security and of course

sport as well are going to be followed up - are going to form the

basis for a wider debate. I think that's a very important role

newspapers have to play and will continue to do so. If things are

changing, we'll look at what others are doing. Hopefully we learn from

that. Maybe they learn from us as well. Newspapers have to make money,

of course. That's what they are primarily - money-making machines.

Someone talked about the three- legged stool that supported the

newspaper industry. That was advertising, circulation and a

cheap paper. Now, that is becoming a monostool very quickly, isn't it?

It is, yeah. All of those things are under pressure, but I think you

have hit on it with the word "credibility". The printed word in

a reputable newspaper still has the lead on credibility. And the

undoing of blogging and social networking will be its lack of

credibility, and there's been a number of mistakes and erroneous

reports online which are undermining the credibility of that

medium, and newspapers have got to play into that. You know, if you

want the real story - the inside track, the credible approach, it's

going to be in print, and to me, that's what the publishers have to

grab. I suspect that old media and new media all make mistakes. Even

on this island in the last year... Yes, but a newspaper is accountable

when it makes a mistake. A blogger isn't. A blogger is accountable to

the same defamation and libel laws in that way. We can also get caught

looking stupid. That ayour reputation. The one thing all of us

in different types of media are conscious of is - being local is

important, actually connecting with community. It's something papers,

particularly on a weekly basis, do very well around Northern Ireland.

It's something bloggers do well if they come from a community and talk

about it. That's probably where some of the trust and reputation

and some of the future comes from - being a trusted source. Newspapers

have to make money. How can they make money in a digital age?

they move into the digital age, we're going to have to find a way

of making online pay for itself. You know, the Daily Mail group has

just announced �10 million profits from its Mail Online service, the

biggest in the world. The other newspapers are going to have to do

the same. You've got to make online pay. As Google would say, you have

to monetise it every time somebody calls in on it. How are you

progressing with that? We have a subscription model for our website

which we're examining. We may well move forward. Where we have an

audience online tends to be brief and fleeting. The figures show that

people read newspapers longer, which is great for journalists. It

gives you chance to read it in more depth. Newspapers will have to come

to terms with online operations and finding a way of making money out

of it. But there is a credibility for newspapers, and I think

newspapers will hopefully have a role to play for many years to come.

Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. That's where we must leave

it this time around. We'll be back next week at the usual times. I