Powerful insights into grief

Radio Review: The most high-profile part of Terry Prone's job is grooming Irish politicians to handle the media - she is after all credited (or should that be blamed?) with putting the phrase "I'm glad you asked me that question" into circulation - so it was interesting to hear her analysis of Gerry Adams's interview style (The Wide Angle, NewsTalk 106, Sunday).

"First of all he starts a monotone like a dentist's drill, out of which it is very hard to pick out individual points, then he bullies the interviewer about phraseology, and then he bullies the listeners that they are to understand things in a particular way, and finally he deflects using a whole load of terms that no one understands."

She said no journalist or broadcaster is able to stop those four things from happening - an opinion that might just cause a little bit of chilliness in the Pat Kenny studio next time she arrives in for her regular Friday weekly review slot where she is invariably joined by political journalists.

Prone was on during the newspaper review slot, where Wide Angle presenter Karen Coleman gives her guests an hour to go through the mountain of Sunday newsprint - which can be a long time depending on the calibre of the reviewers. Last Sunday, at least, it was a lively and engaging hour of radio. It's also down to Coleman, who gets stuck in with her own opinion without being overbearing. Most of all there's isn't quite the same sense that the newspaper review is a lite'n'brite warm-up slot for the main business of the programme, which always strikes me as being the case on other shows, particularly Sam Smyth's Sunday Supplement (Today FM.

On Wednesday, Marian Finucane showed just how powerful an interviewer she is when she's genuinely engaged with the topic (Marian Finucane, RTÉ Radio 1, Mon-Fri). The sisters and partner of the murdered Belfast man, Robert McCartney, were in studio and no other broadcaster could have handled the interview with the same perfectly balanced mixture of sensitivity and toughness. At one point Finucane explained to the listeners that the loud rustling was the sound of tissue packets being opened in the studio. But the real sound that the sisters started - and one that reverberated on the airwaves all week - was the sound of a lid being blown off.

These are women who, until January 30th, when their brother was murdered, probably never expected to see their names in print or to have to talk into a microphone but with Finucane's skilful questioning they gave a powerful insight into what it's like to live in an IRA "protected" area in Belfast - and into their private grief and emotional turmoil.

The sisters know full well they have been thrown into a political arena, that they are being used as much as they are using the media, but they said if it justifies their end - seeing their brother's murderer in court - it will be a price worth paying.

One caller said he had learned more about the North in 20 minutes than he had in 30 years, and the ordinary way that the McCartneys talked about living in an environment where IRA "justice" was a fact of life was chilling.Gerry Adams could, they said, help make the killer give himself up to the police, not directly, "but he knows the right people to talk to". It wouldn't be the first time, they said, that someone had given themselves up to the police when it was expedient for the IRA or Sinn Féin.

Listening to the McCartneys on Marian Finucane's programme and knowing that no other slot or interviewer could have handled it in the same insightful way made me wonder, and not for the first time, what Ryan Tubridy is going to bring to this slot that isn't going to alienate Finucane's enormous fan base.

Terry Prone's view on Gerry Adams's ability of bamboozle could not be shared by anyone who heard Aine Lawlor's robust handling of the controntational Sinn Féin leader (Morning Ireland, RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) or indeed by veteran IRA watcher Ed Moloney (Tonight with Vincent Browne, RTE1, Wednesday). "Sinn Fein has been crucified by RTÉ and BBC this week," Moloney said. The peace process-fuelled honeymoon is over.