Making media matter

Idealistic, searching, restless, looking for a buzz – characteristics that emerge in Roger Greene's interviews with leading Irish journalists. But there's not much self-doubt, and a disturbing assurance about what they do and how they do it, writes Conor Brady

Talk radio is hard work. Days are long and evenings are even longer. Filling all those hours is a challenge. Thus when a talk radio presenter cultivates a slot, makes something special of it and develops a loyal audience, there ought to be a celebration.

Under the Spotlight – Conversations with 17 Leading Irish Journalists is something of a celebration. It is a selection of interviews, broadcast over the past two years, on Roger Greene's Media Matters programme, which goes out on Newstalk 106 in Dublin over a two-hour lunchtime span on Sundays. Most of the subjects interviewed do not dwell so much on journalism as on the influences that made them become journalists. There is some instructiveness in that.

The author-cum-interviewer, Roger Greene, is himself something of an unusual figure in the Irish media landscape. I must declare an interest. He has twice extended to me the privilege of a guest-slot on Media Matters. His background in media is remarkable for its variety. He has worked in advertising, as a film-maker, a radio broadcaster and latterly as a lecturer with the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

In studio with his subject, he has a courtly, professorial air. He manages to give his guest the impression that it is he – the interviewee – rather than the programme presenter, who is leading the discussion.

This comes across perhaps even more clearly in the print version of these interviews. Roger Greene's questions are succinct and indicative. The answers are often prolix – sometimes bordering on the lyrical. The transcripts confirm that Irish journalists are fluent when it comes to talking about themselves – ourselves. We learn of childhood ambitions, bereavements, youthful idealism, career confusions and the lucky breaks or the moments of Pauline conversion when our heroes realise that their vocation lies in asking questions and putting the answers down.

The selection may be somewhat eccentric. There is nobody currently working in media in Northern Ireland. There is nobody from the regional media (although many of the subjects have had regional experience). There are no editors from Independent News and Media (if one excepts Noirin Hegarty, editor of the Sunday Tribune, where Independent has an interest).

They do present an eclectic mix, nonetheless, from yours truly to Eamon Delaney of Magill and from Eamon Dunphy of (among other respectable addresses) Newstalk 106 to Justine McCarthy of the Irish Independent. They include RTÉ's Kevin Rafter, the BBC's Denis Tuohy and the Irish Times's veteran film critic, Michael Dwyer.

Certain things come out strongly. There are ideals. Frank Connolly speaks of "a personal motivation... a view that journalists have a responsibility to highlight the needs and wants of the people who are dispossessed... or who don't have power." Eamon Dunphy says that journalists "represent... the ordinary person out there who doesn't have the information that they need to understand how society works". John Waters talks about discovering his "responsibility... to represent those (places) and things... that were not represented in the media". The BBC's Fergal Keane speaks of "that passion to find people who are shut out".

There are themes of loss in many of the narratives. Two of the women, Justine McCarthy and Lara Marlowe, recall the early deaths of their fathers in tracing their steps into journalism – as I do myself. Gene Kerrigan speaks of his "drifting" in Dublin in the 1960s when his friends and older brothers had left Ireland to find work abroad. Carol Flynn, herself the daughter of a Press family, recalls her sense of loss when the Irish Press closed in 1955. Fergal Keane tells of the pain of growing up in a family stricken by alcoholism.

One can pick up a sense of restlessness here too. Hardly any of the subjects have followed a straight career trajectory. Joe Mulholland was a teacher. Gene Kerrigan worked in a cinema. Eamon Dunphy was a footballer. Eamon Delaney was a diplomat. Noirin Hegarty and Caroline Morahan appear to be the only ones who were vocationally trained to work in the media – at the Rathmines College and DCU respectively. Within journalism, most of them (us!) have moved from job to job, from print to broadcast or vice versa and sometimes back again.

And there is the recurring sense that these are people who have wanted to do something different. Damien Kiberd tells of throwing his tie in the bin when he escaped from a bank job to go working for the Irish Press. Lara Marlowe thought she might be a lawyer or a diplomat but plumped for the excitement of news.

Idealistic, searching for something, restless, looking for a buzz: are these the terms that characterise Irish journalism – or journalists – of the 21st century? By and large these are not negative qualities in the make-up of an individual. And they are perhaps reflected in the honourable record of Irish journalists over a period of great stress and change in the society which they serve. Gene Kerrigan makes the point that "much of what has come out in the last ten years" has been "media driven".

What disquiets me when I read what my colleagues (and I) have to say about our jobs is that there is so little self-doubt. Not many are moved to reflect on the immense power and influence we wield. There is a disturbing assurance about what we do and the way we do it. We are not disposed – any more than any other trade or profession – to too much critical self-examination. It may not be what Roger Greene wanted to highlight in this exercise. But like Sherlock Holmes's dog – that did not bark in the night – it is significant.

Under the Spotlight, by Roger Greene, is published by The Liffey Press. Conor Brady is Editor Emeritus of the Irish Times. He is a senior teaching fellow at UCD graduate business school. His book Up With the Times has been published recently by Gill and Macmillan