‘My job is to ask questions’

A combination of breaking news, interviews and analysis of domestic and foreign politics, sports, popular entertainment and a sprinkling of interesting oddities presented by one of the country’s foremost journalists is as good a description as any for Matt Cooper’s drivetime radio programme The Last Word. His six years as editor of the Sunday Tribune seem to have influenced his efforts to entertain as well as enlighten.

His journalistic career began with the student Gazette and Rag Mag in UCC where he completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree which he complemented with a Graduate Diploma, now an MA, in Journalism at DCU in 1988. His simple intention was to be a reporter.

On his time at DCU he says: “One thing I discovered early on was that a lot of people in my class who would have been a lot brighter than me all saw themselves coming out and getting opinion columns in the Irish Times straight away where as I just wanted to be a reporter. You actually have to do the hard graft as a reporter and learn a lot about stuff before you go start writing opinions about stuff.”

Twenty years of hard graft later he now writes regular columns for the Sunday Times and the Irish Examiner which he admits come under the opinion heading, but he is quick to point out his work is based on facts rather than what he calls the “I think I believe type of stuff”. He says: “I try to a accumulate facts and try and put them together”. Putting it succinctly he said, “My job is to ask questions”.

As if to accentuate this point he highlights his role as the presenter of TV3’s Champion’s League and All-Ireland Championship match broadcasts. “I ask the questions and let the experts answer.”

His experience in the industry is first rate. He became the youngest ever editor of a national newspaper when he took over the Sunday Tribune aged just 30 in 1996 and that was after several years as the business editor of the Irish Independent.

As he sits unassumingly in the middle of a busy cafe across from the Today FM studios enjoying his muffin and latte he mentions his first book, Who really Runs Ireland, which rose above a plethora of post boom ‘who dunnits’ to receive broad critical acclaim. Listening to his knowledge and experience you get the feeling it’s something he needed to do after the cry of “what the hell just happened” began to reverberate around the country in the last two years.

“I think you have a better chance of knowing where you are going to when you know how you got to where you are,” he says. “What worries me is a lot of the same crowd of fools who got us into the position we’re in are still keeping themselves in positions of power to lead us on to where we go next and their track record is abysmal.” No beating about the bush there then.

His anger about those who made the mess are matched by his frustration at the public’s inability to digest the hard facts about the current situation. “People don’t want to confront the truth… it’s something I really worry about.”

He makes it clear the public had a hand in our own downfall. Pondering the reasons for our ‘head in the sand mentality’ to the crisis in political leadership and ability he pointed out that we are eternal optimists who had an “insane belief that borrowing cheap money was a good thing”.

And now that it’s all gone belly up? “What I’m getting all the time off people is ‘I’m not reading the newspapers, I can’t deal with the bad news, I’m not listening to the radio”’. His answer is blunt, and his passion is clearly rising as he speaks about the topic. ”Deal with it. Grow up rather than pretend it’s not happening.”

The public and the politicians are not the only ones wondering where we go from here and he is acutely aware of the precarious position of the industry he clearly loves. The decreasing revenue and concentration of ownership in Irish media are of serious concern to him.

Major spending cuts are resulting in a big decline in numbers of journalists working in all sectors of the news media. People and resources are thinly spread and while he does have sympathy for media owners he feels it’s a cost exercise which is gravely detrimental to the future of quality news gathering.

“It’s management constructing this multi-tasking. One of the reasons the Irish Press went out of business is that there wasn’t good enough quality control. They were expecting people to multi-task instead of doing what they were good at. People were spending a couple of days a week writing stories and sub-editing another couple of days.”

But as traditional news media like radio, TV and print struggle with the internet age he sees no solutions yet. Nobody does he feels. The fall in advertising and sales revenue in the print media is the most severe. “I fear for newspapers mainly because of the internet and the changes in consumer habits, when you used to walk into a cafe you would always see people reading newspapers, you still do but you’re just as likely to see someone on a laptop or iPhone now.”

He openly admits he takes a traditionalist’s approach to the rise of citizen journalism. “The internet is wonderful as a resource for finding out things. The problem is where is real journalism going to fit in? Very few bloggers know how to research stories, how to check facts and how to interview people. Someone who could never get a job in a newspaper can write a column and put it up on the net, call themselves a blogger and suddenly they’re more reliable. I don’t think so, sorry. Something will have to be done. There are some things citizen journalism is ok for but the potential for manipulation is enormous if you don’t have proper editorial and gate-keeping standards.”

His predications are dire if the current trend continues. “You’re going to see wave after wave of cutbacks in the editorial and the people who are left are going to be doing more and more, just rewriting press releases and taking things from other websites. It’s a real worry to journalists as to how they are going to make a living out of it now.”

The extremes of mediocrity which get popular attention are part of the problem. On the Twitter phenomenon he says “I signed up but I haven’t sent a single tweet, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’m not conceited enough to think that anyone could be the least bit fucking interested whether I think it’s a nice day or whatever.” As a father of five and a national broadcaster he rarely swears so when he does it’s clear he means it.

The popularity of instant banality is damaging journalism and in turn society he says. “You will end up with all sorts of rumours going around getting reported as fact and this idea that things that are wrong will be corrected by the wisdom of the crowd is weak. History shows that it’s often the crowd that gets it wrong. I’d rather depend on the story that’s well researched than the opinion of the crowds.”

It’s 11am and his work day is about to start. History thus far has shown that Matt Cooper usually calls it right and you’d be tempted to pay attention to what he’s saying and that’s not just because he paid for the coffee.