Paradox

Please try to bear with Meejit as, amid the Christmas cheer (and gloom), this column struggles to shape an intellectual framework that covers some of the notable media events and characters of the past year.

We're planning to call it the Meejit Paradox, so please let us know if you've heard this one before. We reckon that if 2005 teaches us nothing else, it's that the higher the evident journalistic status of a particular hack or publication, the lousier he/she/it is at doing what is generally, if idealistically, seen as the basic job of journalism, ie holding the powerful accountable for their actions by revealing them to the public.

The formula suggests that, for example, a journalist who has (1) a regular outlet in an important, highly regarded newspaper; (2) easy, confidential access to the most dominant figures; (3) regular broadcast-media appearances and book deals; and (4) a household name – journalistic "cultural capital" up the wazoo, in other words – would actually do little or no proper work. In fact, what work he did produce would probably be an obstacle to real revelations and understanding about how powerful forces work in society.

Step forward Bob Woodward, the ne plus ultra proof of the paradox's power. The Washington Post journalist is half of the team whose Watergate work defined investigative journalism and the Fourth Estate for a generation. Unfortunately, Woodward himself (a Republican, as viewers of All The President's Men may recall Robert Redford confessing) has spent most of that generation atoning for his sins.

His stint as the Bush administration's PR stenographer only came into sharp focus this year, however, when it emerged that he had been the first recipient of a crucial leak in the White House's complex Plame-CIA scandal. He had not only concealed this fact from prosecutors, editors and (most importantly) readers, but had gone on making dismissive comments about the whole case in his regular TV role as Very Important Pundit.

Bless him, he's not alone on the pinnacle of paradox. The New York Times has offered a fine example too. It seems reporter Judith Miller saw her Pulitzer Prize (and book deals etc) as licence to peddle White House lies about WMD, and (again) to obscure her central role in the Plame game.

Last summer Miller was elevated to perhaps the highest level of journalistic honour, ie free-press martyr, when she was jailed for "refusing to reveal her sources" (a phrase that proved less than apt when the truth began to squeeze out). The Meejit Paradox could have warned us that at that point she was probably actually doing the low work of concealment and untruth, not usually part of the press-martyr's creed.

It's difficult to imagine any Irish journalist competing with these paradoxical paragons, especially when Meejit pauses to reflect on our libel laws.

Nonetheless, the year is replete with lesser sins locally. For example: the highest-status paper on these shores, the Irish Times, eventually shook into halting life after a long stupor about the use of Shannon for US military and "rendition" purposes, but at Village we were somewhat bemused to see these "revelations" highlighted months after we had splashed them on the magazine's cover.

Then there's our most popular paper, the Sunday Independent. It's not necessarily held in the highest professional esteem, but its million readers still expect better than a wholly speculative and nasty page-one shocker. What was worse, however, was some of the media's breast-beating about that Liam Lawlor story, playing right into the repressive hands of justice minister Michael McDowell.

Which brings us neatly to Sam Smyth, probably the most well-known investigative journalist in Ireland's print media, reporting for our top-selling daily newspaper. The little we know, as yet, of how the Frank Connolly story has been told suggests Smyth is not immune to paradox: Sam's service to the powerful, and to that justice minister in particular, was well above, and below, the call of duty.