More breadth than depth

RTE radio news and current affairs people threw a fair bit of effort into coverage and analysis of the disastrous consequences of "Black Friday" as Cardinal Daly insistently coined it on This Week (RTE Radio 1, Sunday) but maybe not enough. In a weekend it never approached the level of insight of Friday's Prime Time on TV.

There was a special radio news hour at 10 p.m. on Friday, and a Morning Ireland the next morning Saturday View was extended to good effect. The Sunday Show had the misfortune of scheduling a wholly inappropriate panel (when was the last time that programme couldn't feature some scrap about the North?) and the poor judgment not to change it. But at least this was in the knowledge that This Week would row in with more reaction to the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire.

Needless to say, this being RTE and it being a weekend and all much of the coverage consisted of rounding up the usual subjects for interview. This is an important task, but partly as a consequence, in the first 48 hours after the Canary Wharf carnage (write on Sunday evening) at least three key issues were, extraordinarily, missing from the analysis.

Firstly, only three weeks after a Fine Gael delegation returned from Britain to report that the "ongoing punitive treatment of Irish republican prisoners calls into question the sincerity of UK government statements ... [it] is actually damaging and destabilising of the peace process", this issue only popped up as far as I heard in a vox pop from republican areas.

Secondly, the US dimension to the peace process was not critically scrutinised in the wake of its failure. The media here, in general, be over dependent in this area [on commentators such as Niall O'Dowd and Tim Pat Coogan, who are intimately involved. Presumably, the IRA leadership was not as impressed with US efforts.

Finally, loyalist paramilitary restraint was virtually taken for granted until reports late on Sunday showed the foolishness of that faith. Yes, David Ervine of the PUP seemed to earn it in his few brief forays he comes across as among the few genuinely articulate, credible figures in the whole Northern cast of characters Richard Crowley's interview with him on Saturday's Morning Ireland was the most reassuring of the weekend. But then, Gerry Adams no media slouch himself had been reassuring on local radio in the North on Friday afternoon. Both men have colleagues with less charming credentials.

Adams still managed to be impressive all weekend though he let the guard slip unusually on TV Friday night when he told Bryan Dobson, "I'll be doing more media work tomorrow ... when I'll go beyond this holding statement" definitely "off the air" language. That "media work" made him the mainstay of Saturday and Sunday programming, and listeners will have got an insight into his awful predicament.

Another mainstay, off the air, was editor Cliodhna O'Flynn. She demonstrated her star quality in the RTE newsroom by editing that Friday night special, hosted by Sean O'Rourke, until after 11 p.m. her name then cropped up again as editor of the 8 a.m. Saturday Morning Ireland. Presumably she never left Montrose all night she probably wasn't the only one.

In recognition of such efforts, and in light of events, this column which sniped a bit at the subject last Tuesday will hold fire on the new Morning Ireland format for at least another week.

Some praise, however, should go to O'Rourke and News at One (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), for the entertainment highlight of a week that subsequently turned very sour. This was Thursday's coverage of the Dail battle between Proinsias De Rossa and Joe Walsh (remember?). After playing highlights of the face off aptly described by a Liveline listener as "like seven year olds in a classroom", O'Rourke got the protagonists into the Dail studio (separately, of course, and at different times) and sparks flew.

Comic gems of the past, including the classic Moscow letter and the laugh a minute beef tribunal, were colourfully evoked, and even O'Rourke couldn't resist a chuckle as he shouted "Listen, come here, Joe Walsh, I'm afraid we've run out of time" and turned down the volume on potential defamation.

More history was dredged up on Thursday's Vincent Browne Tonight (Classic Hits 98FM), which celebrated Garret's FitzGerald's 70th birthday with the man himself. Mind you, I tuned in late and wasn't sure if it was FitzGerald or a Scrap Saturday style parody, and my confusion wasn't put to rest when a phone call came through to the studio from someone croaking like Henry Kissinger.

But no, it was really Garret and Henry, showering each other with admiration and warm memories. (Incidentally, Kissinger may have offered some insight into how US policy makers really view us when he deemed it sufficient to cite his Irish American wife's "stay out of it" strictures as the reason he never shuttled here.) The chat ended with Fitzgerald looking forward to "seeing you in Vancouver, at the Trilateral Commission meeting".

Ironically, the mid 1970s period evoked in such loving detail by the two old friends was also referred to by another caller, Tom Hyland, who wondered why, when FitzGerald was foreign minister, Ireland had not voted to condemn Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. Sadly, FitzGerald's memory failed him.