RADIO REVIEW: Playback (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) is excruciating listening for this column at the best of times. I mean no offence to Ruth Buchanan, who has largely done a good job with the programme, but hearing her weekly highlights show on a Saturday morning, as the nation contemplates purchasing a newspaper that happens to contain my own thoughts on the radio week, invariably involves too many pinpricks of conscience and too few phew-I've-got-that-covereds.
At least once a month I issue a full-fledged Homeric "D'oh!" at the sound of some golden nugget that has slipped downstream without catching my eye, or indeed ear.
Sometimes, though, my reaction to Playback is a more clinical "what is she at?" Last Saturday was such an occasion, when a broadcaster with, shall we say, historic links to Fine Gael - Buchanan sought the FG nomination in Wicklow in the 1997 general election, and hubby Shane Ross was a member of the parliamentary party - devoted most of the programme's first quarter to deeply inconsequential reflections on its leader's current fortunes. This section started with Buchanan warbling a ballad of her own invention, casting Enda Kenny as the party's knight in shining armour; then she introduced an interminable clip of Kenny by saying he "went on the attack" in what was actually a distinctly watery Morning Ireland performance. Ten minutes later and we were still playing back Kenny, though by this stage it was a Joe Taylor parody rather than the original.
Despite a typical American upbringing, during which my irony gene was snipped, I did think I might have heard Buchanan's tongue sliding cheekwards as she valorised the FG leader. All the same, the resemblance to a party political broadcast was too close for the comfort of someone who might be regarded as having a conflict of interest. (Buchanan faces another dilemma today, since this week's noisy Ciaran Cuffe story was originally her hubby's in the Sunday Independent.)
Perceived conflicts of interest were all the rage this week, and anyone looking for training in how to make a full and humble apology on the national airwaves about this sort of thing should definitely turn to Bryan Dobson. He will, of course, refuse to offer any such training, but he might refer rejected clients to the tape of his performance on Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Thursday). Dobson's telephone intervention was particularly refreshing, since Browne had been faced with a panel who were inclined to cut the Six-One presenter some slack: RTÉ's freedom of information officer, Peter Feeney, defended him, and journalist Brian Dowling observed that only "a small pool" of people in Ireland are qualified to offer the sort of training Dobson had given in the case of the health board chiefs, and, of course, they're all media practitioners.
Then suddenly there was Dobson himself, saying he'd done wrong and wouldn't do it again, and wondering what should happen to him.
"I don't know whether I should be suspended or fired or what the appropriate sanction is," he mused. I don't think I heard a smirk there, and despite a later reference to being "in confessional mode" that suggested an element of performance, Dobson was quite impressively contrite.
"That's very disappointing," remarked Browne, who had been making all the running with outrage on this question. "It takes the wind out of our sails a bit."
Then he changed tack and found a gale blowing him in the direction of RTÉ's Feeney, who had stood over behaviour that it turned out Dobson couldn't himself defend.
Still, when the Brownestorm was finished, the "small pool" image stuck with me, and with it the insinuation that in such a small media/politics/business eco-system as exists in Ireland, journalists can't really always be expected to live and work by the principles of independence that we blather about in public, not least at anodyne gatherings such as this week's Bono-blessed editors' conference in Dublin.
To be sure, as Bono himself might tell you, purity is a mug's game, if it is even theoretically possible at all. I knew a hack years ago who swore he could draw a "friends and family tree" that connected virtually all the stories that appeared on the features pages of a particular Irish newspaper. Your radio reviewer endeavours to practise the principles of full disclosure, but often opts for selective avoidance instead - thus the only mention of Ciaran Cuffe above is a neutral parenthetical one, because I'm not fully confident that my personal acquaintance with the guy wouldn't colour any coverage I might give to his difficulties.
Consumers should be able to read the list of ingredients. For audiences, it's better to at least know where, say, Pat Kenny fits into the media food-chain, and then draw our own conclusions about what we're being fed.