RADIO: As the song might have put it, if Gil Scott-Heron wanted to rhyme properly: have you heard from Johannes Bird? If you turned on RTÉ radio this week, there was no missing Charlie Bird - what's this they call him now? "Chief special correspondent" or something? - reporting from the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.
For people inclined to conspiratorial notions about the dirty deeds that global élites are getting up to, and the way they spin those deeds, the summit, and Charlie's able coverage of it, should be both revealing and encouraging. The big international powers, governmental and corporate, were clearly looking for this gathering, like its Rio predecessor, to be a PR coup of sorts. However, by their grand, inclusive gesture of including hordes of mere "civil society" representatives from NGOs and the like among the invited throng, they planted the seeds of their own embarrassment.
It's simple, really. Say what you like about the qualities of Bird's journalism (and I've said plenty), but if he's got a clear, in-his-face choice between doing a story about how a few governments say that things are fine and dandy, and a story full of conflict, anger and argument about how every time he turns around he meets an environmental or human-rights expert who is browned off at the summit's half-arsed results, which is he going to choose? And, unlike the situation at many international gatherings, where protests happen far away and outside, the organisers of the summit have ensured that Charlie and the rest of the world's journalists just can't miss the disgruntled masses.
Add the decision to host the champagne-scoffing élites only a few miles away from dire, Third-World poverty, and the world's media consumers are left with a thoroughly unsavoury image of corruption and compromise. Of course, the élites don't make these fundamental PR errors because they're stupid; they do it because they're under pressure - and it's up to Charlie and the rest of us who care about, you know, people, the planet, peace, that sort of thing, to keep the pressure on.
Of course, those media consumers with the misfortune to live in the US are not getting many of these images. With President Bush staying home and turning up the heat on Iraq, his largely pliant domestic media can't get too bothered about the views of the other 95 per cent of the world's population. Now that he's magnanimously agreed to tell the UN why he's planning to launch an unprovoked war against another member state, The Diplomatic Jigsaw (BBC World Service, Friday) was a timely reminder of how the US made its "war on terrorism" after last September 11th look like an international effort.
Presenter Edward Stourton talked to an astonishing array of powerful and relevant players - Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair, Pervez Musharraf - and once he got past the "where were you on the day" formalities, there was realpolitik about the combination of bullying and wheedling that went into "coalition-building". Inevitably, the programme was stodgy, formal and aurally overweighted with significance; for good listeners-between-the-lines, however, it was an important resource.
Resource wars are not just about oil. Assignment (BBC World Service, Saturday) looked at the clearer liquid that lies at the centre of much of the friction between Israel and Palestinians: water. Both the Israeli and Palestinian populations are growing fast, and the region's water resources are pressed, polluted and vulnerable to climate change. Presenter Alan Johnston made a much more vivid attack on a complex issue than Stourton, starting with the sound of the river Jordan running through his hands, and moving quickly to voices and stories from a West Bank village where Israel literally chokes off the water supply, holding up the vital tankers at an army checkpoint.
Meanwhile, a nearby Jewish settlement is full of swimming pools, well-watered lawns, vineyards and spotlessly washed cars. The grounds for Palestinian grievance were clear, a powerful health and hygiene basis for crisis, anger and war.
DESPITE all of their experience in conflict zones and covering dangerous stories of crime and punishment, journalists Jim Cusack and Paul Williams this week both told stories that would have surprised some listeners, of coming under pressure from unexpected quarters.
Cusack, until last week this newspaper's security editor, told Marian Finucane (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) a bit about the scary but predictable threats from criminals and paramilitaries, but more of the long interview was devoted to Cusack's complaints of damage and ill-treatment inflicted by editorial managers.
Paul Williams, the Sunday World's Mr Big when it comes to crime coverage, had an even more disturbing tale to tell Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday). Williams recently strayed off his accustomed journalistic beat to lay into the Government over its dissembling on healthcare. For his troubles, he received a nasty phone call from someone high up in Fianna Fáil, threatening non-cooperation from the Government and worse for his editorial impertinence. In fairness, Bertie Ahern had such an easy ride from the Sunday World prior to the election that the article must have come as something of a shock. Fair dues to Williams, however, both for having a go and for exposing the political bully-boys who still haven't copped on that journalism, just occasionally, needs to confront the powerful.
Even that belt of the crozier was positively rubbery compared to the thwack inflicted by the Catholic authorities against the Ballyfermot co-op in the 1950s. Documentary on One: The Ballyfermot Co-Operative (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday) told the fascinating story of how a few "communists" were battered for trying to set up a consumer co-op in the impoverished community. Stories from participants in the aborted experiment were intercut with magisterial readings from parish newsletters and the like, featuring red-baiting of which the Sunday Independent itself would be proud.
That paper's erstwhile hatchet man, Eamon Dunphy, was back in the radio saddle this week on The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday) - though now sadly bereft of his sidekick, Navan man - and riding shotgun elsewhere besides. Has he got a book out or something? On his first day back, he closed the programme by inviting British sportswriter Geoff Powell on air to recite an ode to himself and Roy Keane. (Dunphy had introduced Powell by assuring us that the latter had written by far the most sensitive and intelligent piece about Keane, which of course could only mean the one thing.) Mark Lawrenson was included in the conversation as the "Keane should have kept his mouth shut" fall-guy, but the collective purpose of Powell and Dunphy was clear and slightly nauseating. Keane, it seems, is a man's man's man's man, and the small-minded people who don't appreciate that probably also agreed with the outlawing of the tackle from behind.
Mind you, there was nothing incoherent about Dunphy's argument, here or elsewhere. On Thursday's Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) he imperiously walked all over a wandering Richard Downes, who scarcely managed a complete sentence, let alone a challenging question.
Meanwhile, Dunphy's new Today FM boss, Scottish Radio Holdings, was reported on Wednesday to be poised to take over the faltering new local station, Dublin's Country. The station is a mess, no doubt about that, but under the regulations I thought cross-ownership and rapid licence turnaround were not supposed to happen. I suppose that means they probably will.
hbrowne@irish-times.ie