He was "the most verbally brutal journalist", said the Irish Times obituary of Auberon Waugh. True. The son of Evelyn Brideshead Revisited Waugh, Auberon died 11 days ago, aged 61. It may have been because he lived in the shadow of Daddy and suffered from poor health for much of his life that Waugh-the-Younger became so verbally brutal. Who knows? But whatever the reasons, he was certainly an exemplar of a vicious kind of braying, poisonous, journalistic cruelty. Sad really, because he clearly had talent.
Anyway, the day after Auberon Waugh's death, Liam Lawlor went to prison. Though an unrelated event, it coincidentally unleashed some of - by Irish standards, at any rate - the most verbally brutal journalism of this or any other age. There was, as many commentators have already noted, a glut of glee and gloating over Lawlor's come-uppance. A sanctimonious note was detectable in most coverage and normally sober RTE radio displayed astonishing, lavatorial prurience. Bucket or in-cell loo? RTE would flush out the truth. Still, for real sewer journalism, the Irish Mirror was unequalled.
Its editor wrote a front page open letter to Lawlor, expressing the hope that the disgraced TD was "looking forward" to his "little holiday in AIDS-ridden Mountjoy prison". After this introductory well-wishing, the verbal brutality warmed up. Lawlor was expected to feel quite at home among "drug dealers, killers and thieves" before the letter concluded that, in prison, "a good-looking fella like yourself will make a lot of new friends".
For sheer contempt, even Liam Lawlor couldn't possibly match that final nastiness. Our journalism, it appears, is being dangerously coarsened by the worst of British.
No doubt, we could learn from the best of British journalism, a fraction of which can be superb. But, for the most part, it's not its virtues (proportion and literacy) but its vices (sleaze and nastiness) we're importing. It's easy (sometimes justified too) to argue that attacking a tabloid is typical broadsheet snobbery, pedantry, sniffiness, condescension and arrogance - real Auberon Waugh traits. At least, that's a routine tabloid defence. But for a tabloid to squeal that it is being condemned just for being a tabloid is often no defence. Indeed, such a dismissal of criticism, simply because it's in a broadsheet is, by definition, doing what you are denouncing.
Truth is, it's incidental that the Irish Mirror is a tabloid. Auberon Waugh wrote mostly for broadsheets - the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph (as well as the Spectator magazine) - and he, too, revelled in verbal brutality. No, it's not the shape or size of the paper; it's the words and pictures printed on it. In fact, tabloid journalism, most fair-minded people in the business will correctly tell you, is at least as - and probably more - difficult to do well than broadsheet journalism. Writing pointed, punchy, lively copy is a difficult skill, as is displaying it to best effect.
Quite simply, there is decent broadsheet journalism and decent tabloid journalism, just as there are nasty versions of both. The seriously nasty stuff, wherever it appears, is never just inaccurate, biased and sensationalised (though it is usually all those). It is also gratuitously hurtful. That is its hallmark. There's often spite and vengeance and even a sense of sadism in it. When you read it, you can invariably hear the voice of the bully. Crucially though, a bullying bray adds drama and thereby sells newspapers. As a result, it is not only tolerated but seldom seriously condemned in the press. Nothing personal, you understand, just business.
The Auberon Waugh variety, in which, for instance, a wine under review was compared to "a bunch of dead chrysanthemums on the grave of a stillborn West Indian baby"; Barbara Castle was called "revoltingly ugly" and almost everybody who disagreed with him was "ghastly and boring" has its admirers, of course. Sycophantic obituaries referred to his "genius" and "Swiftian" wit. The Telegraph devoted almost five pages to his passing. "The greatest journalist of my generation" wrote Grey Gowrie. "The journalist's journalist" said Lynn Barber. The bigot's journalist, I'm afraid.
Even allowing for inevitable posthumous glorification - and Waugh can't be blamed for that - the gushing press epithets were absurd. Then again, the purpose of those lavish obituaries was not simply to lament the death of Auberon Waugh. They also acted as reinforcers of particular class attitudes within sections of the British press. Ironically, Swift would have understood. He, after all, realised that the smug and complacent well-to-do were, correctly, the natural targets of satire. Waugh characteristically sneered at poor people and simply insulted the non-poor who disagreed with him.
Had he done it primarily to point out (as Lawlor's imprisonment was glibly said to demonstrate) that there can be no "untouchables", well . . . fair enough. After all, poverty and the deprivations it generates ought not be celebrated. Workers are no more human than bosses. Bleeding heart liberalism can become tiresome. But there is a difference between mere sneering and valuable satire even if there is no difference between vulgar abuse and what Waugh admirers euphemistically refer to as "the vituperative arts". It's not a "vituperative art" just to insult people from a position of snobbery. It's not an art at all and it's certainly not funny. It's just prattish behaviour.
We don't, fortunately enough, quite have an Auberon Waugh in Irish journalism. (Sure, there are some pale imitations and even a few who, alarmingly, are not quite pale enough. But we don't have the full-blown type.) We do however, have worrying myths in gestation. Among these is the "lost characters" myth, a self-serving slice of nostalgic nonsense with a worryingly Waugh-ish tone. According to this version of the world, current journalism education (mention of which can elicit the Tory "insult" of "redbrick" - especially sad when parroted by people Waugh-ite Tories would automatically treat with contempt) produces an efficient but bland product unlike the stylish, individual legends now in their greying years. Tripe. Most young journalists nowadays learn about the history and context of the press and don't just get indoctrinated with a series of mythologising and self-serving anecdotes designed to bolster any self-regarding hierarchy in journalism.
The undeniable truth is that Irish journalism is now both better and worse than it has ever been. There is more fine writing and more abysmal writing, more vigour and more vacuousness, more bite and more fluff than at any time in the past. Increased ties with the outside world has ensured that the range has widened. That is why we should be mindful about what we import. The treatment of Liam Lawlor on his darkest day certainly marked an historic low and the passing of Auberon Waugh provided a timely opportunity to look at our own comment journalism.
Indeed, given that electronic media are so much quicker (albeit far less detailed) with hard news; that newspapers, because of better technology and bigger markets, are increasing in size; that comment journalism is relatively inexpensive and widely read, comment has become more crucial than ever for print media. Worldwide, newspapers are to varying extents being "magazine-ised". Purists may not like it but that's what's happening and the trend will continue.
So, more than ever, proportion is under threat. The voice of the bully, whether in broadsheets or tabloids, attracts attention. It is a valuable weapon in circulation battles. In Britain, there have already been a few heated journalistic spats about Auberon Waugh and his legacy. His defenders, characteristically accusing his critics of being "prigs and puritans", argue that his journalism was essentially about "fun" and "laughter" and "jollity". They need to get a grip because it wasn't. Sure, there was some wit in it. Too often, however, it was simply spiteful, scornful and reactionary - a broadsheet equivalent of the Irish Mirror's letter to Liam Lawlor.
Bertie Ahern's recent call for more openness in the media was not only politically astute but fair. As it's more powerful than ever, only the very naive could fail to understand that the media is as much player as commentator. But its effects on public opinion and general consciousness are notoriously difficult to measure and its internal hierarchies remain ironically at odds with the democracy it is supposed to protect. Even so, most people who bother to think about it at all realise that the vocational goal of journalism and the commercial business of the media are not synonymous.
That bizarre mix becomes one of truth and profit - entities which don't always make for an easy fit. Despite some genuine media embarrassment, it's unlikely that we'll see changes as a result of the scandalous journalism surrounding Liam Lawlor's jailing. Defending RTE radio's coverage, Joe Duffy asked an angry caller if he thought RTE should just "let the opposition" cover the story. Well no, of course not. But should commercial media set the agenda for - and even worse, the tone of - the national broadcaster?
It's bad enough that much of our journalism is being coarsened by importing some of the worst practices of the British tabloids - a brand of journalism universally acknowledged as brutish and nasty. It's even more alarming, albeit predictable, that once imported, such nastiness can spread like a contagion. Still, we really ought not be surprised. The brutishness of British tabloid excess is culturally connected with the brutishness of broadsheet heroes such as the late Auberon Waugh and his cheerleaders. Dirty work, even done with wit, is still dirty work. Looks like our media is getting increasingly connected to the main sewer too.