Mahon mayhem

Amongst the coverage on the Bertie payments scandal meaningful questions were conspicuously absent.

Thanks to the dedicated and efficient team which produces this magazine, it provides up-to-date news and views – at least to readers who buy it soon after it appears on a Thursday. However, no publication can hold all its pages until the last possible minute: some have to be finished a day or two earlier in order to clear the way for processing the late material.

At the moment you're looking at one such page, usually done on a Monday. Flick around the magazine and you'll easily spot the last-minute stuff. Often the difference is not so significant, but this week is one of those legendary long ones in media politics: I write this not knowing for certain if we're picking over the political corpses, as Bertie Ahern follows his News of the World "exclusive" by beginning a new life as a Murdoch columnist-cum-director – keeping the chair warm for Tony Blair – or if we're enjoying a head-shaking "what was all that fuss about anyway?"

It has been one of the almighty fusses, notwithstanding the sense of unreality as simple circumstances were rehearsed ad infinitum and speculated about ad nauseum. It was a case of media monomania – the Irish Times turned its frontpage headlines into a barometer: "Pressure eases" on Thursday 28 September, followed by "Pressure builds" the next day. It was a feeding frenzy on mere scraps.

Certainly the most substantial journalistic moment was in the Mahon tribunal, where Colm Keena and Geraldine Kennedy acted as good journalists should. Keena and Kennedy know they have no special legal privilege, just an ethical code that is one of the last-standing definers of our profession.

Empty questions

It was vaguely surprising when the "excitement" enjoyed a pause – RTÉ Radio One letting Dave Fanning on air to wax nostalgic about vinyl records (Amen, Brother Dave) or the Irish Times devoting two days of frontpage blurb-space to Professor William Reville's embarrassingly foolish attack on straw-men, which he conveniently labelled "political correctness".

Reville was no more foolish than most of the politicians and pundits who blathered insistently that Bertie had "questions to answer", but could rarely come up with anything better than, say, "Doesn't the Taoiseach agree he was a naughty boy?" The professed lust for "answers" was mostly just a desire to pile on the pressure. Oh, there are genuine questions all right, but they've hardly been asked, or they've been asked appallingly.

Meaningful questioning was conspicuously absent when Bryan Dobson interviewed Ahern on Six-One – an event that already seems ancient but was never subjected to much scrutiny for its journalistic qualities. Dobson seemed to be with the Taoiseach as a facilitator rather than an interrogator, so that, for instance, he failed to probe at Ahern's reference to the Manchester payment.

Prone or supine?

In the circumstances, one might be moved to recall Dobson's own brief scandal of three years ago: at that time, he admitted he had provided media coaching to health executives, including mock interviews. Dobson honourably apologised, but not before RTÉ suits and a host of hacks had insisted it was absolutely A-OK to get paid to be a pretend journalist in the morning, and then a real one in the evening. Sure who else could fake it so well?

This relaxed attitude helps explain the ubiquity of Terry Prone, who gets to go on Pat Kenny's radio-show panel and beam from the front of the Sunday Tribune to tell us what she "would have advised" Bertie Ahern – and to praise him lavishly – without having to mention that she and others in her family and firm have in fact advised Bertie and almost anyone else you'd care to mention in Irish politics, and been paid for the service.

Indeed, like dozens of colleagues, I have been "trained" by Terry Prone myself, with the Irish Times footing the bill. A more evidently decent and encouraging person I may never meet. She is perfectly entitled to pursue a diverse career, including regular journalistic commentary (eg a column in the Irish Examiner) if the opportunity arises.

Still, perhaps the fact that it does so often arise, without scrutiny of a potential perception of conflicts of interest, is indicative of a deeper media malaise.