Dr. David Robbins:

There is no work being done with regard to holding the representatives of these think-tanks or various spokespeople to account and being transparent. Some of the research we have done in interviewing environmental correspondents around the world shows they have this idea called "radical transparency". They want to be very transparent about their own news-gathering processes but also expose or be transparent about the agendas of the sources, the people they might interview. It is very important that news consumers know where these people's money is coming from and what their agendas are. Nobody is doing that kind of work in Irish journalism. Nobody is training journalists to be able to do that. I believe this is down to resources. I know from our journalism students who do internships in media organisations that the whole briefing given to radio journalists in particular is that the level of detail people can go into is a matter of resources. It comes down to newsroom constraints on thoroughly checking out and interrogating these people when they come on the air.