Online Newspapers, Live TV Channels, Radios

Media in Ireland is basically print media and electronic media. Irish people spend 40 minutes of their time reading newspapers daily. The printing press came to Ireland in 1550 and the first published newspaper was “Irish Times” which was published in 1859. The number of daily Irish newspaper is 6 whereas the non-daily is 61. Some of the daily newspapers are: “Irish Independent”, “The Irish Sun”, “The Herald”, “Irish Daily Mail” etc and the non-daily ones are “City Wide News”, “Lifetimes”, “Metro Herald” etc. The newspapers are divided into two categories: the national press, most of which is mainly based in Dublin, and another one is the regional press which is scattered throughout the country.

There aren’t any Press Laws in Ireland but the Supreme Court declared that “The right to privacy is one of the fundamental personal rights of the citizen which flow from the Christian and democratic nature of the State.” The Data Protection Act which was first established in 1988, modulates the collection, use, storage, and disclosure of personal information that is processed electronically. Any individual has the right to read and correct the information that is held about them. Basically, censorship is permitted in Ireland as the Irish Constitution concurrently advocates freedom of expression and forbids expression that is socially undesirable.

The Irish people love to watch television as the consumption rate per day says that they spend 199 minutes daily watching Television. There are 4 TV stations and 1,820,000 TV sets. Since the 1920s, RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) has been broadcasting in a major part of Ireland. It is a public service agency that is funded by license fees and the sale of advertising time and it runs four radio and three TV channels.

The TV channels are RTÉ One, RTÉ Two and TG4. There is only one independent and licensed TV station apart from the RTÉ public stations that are TV3. It was first broadcasted in 1998. The number of cable subscribers in Ireland is 672,220 and those who are subscribed to cable receive the three Irish television channels, four UK channels, and a dozen satellite stations.

There are 43 licensed Irish radio stations. These are private stations and are not broadcast by RTÉ. There are 23 local commercial stations, 16 non-commercial community stations, and four hospital or college stations. Some of them broadcast music, advertising, disk jockey chatter, and current affairs programs and some serve their communities with unique discussion programs. The Irish people spend 305 minutes listening to the radio which makes it the most popular media in Ireland.

The number of individuals in Ireland with internet access is 784,000. In a recent survey, it is found out that eight out of 10 online Irish adults use social networks among which 78% of adults were on Facebook, 42% used YouTube, 32% used Twitter and 27% used LinkedIn.