The people's sport
The irish media have been contradictory in their reporting of the Irish soocer team.
Like most soccer fans, Meejit is unimpressed with recent Irish performances, and unblessed with the paranormal powers to see past Village's print deadline to the outcome of the all-revealing Swiss match. But even accepting the prevailing wisdom about Brian Kerr at the time of writing – that he is an arrogant, over-cautious wet blanket tossed over Ireland's burning football ambitions – the media's moral high horse is lame and should be put down.
For weeks we've been hearing that the Irish senior team is "public property", and that its off-field activities should be open and transparent to that public through the medium of journalism. Meejit is sorry to mention's journalism's taboo H-word, "history": but we can't help recalling when, 11 years ago, a young chap named Paul Rowan wrote a book that lifted the lid on Jack Charlton's bullying management regime. Back then, many of the journalists now braying about "public property" told us that in fact we had no right to know about such things, that the only legitimate public interest in the team concerned its results on the pitch. Rowan was pilloried.
Could it be that journalism's main ethical skills are pandering to contacts and reading the writing on the wall? Times and newspapers have changed a bit, but the main difference between Charlton in 1994 and Kerr in 2005 is the apparent weakness of the latter's grip on power – a weakness that disqualifies him from Jack-standard flattery and protection.
The moral porridge is nowhere thicker than at RTÉ. On the one hand, well beyond the "public property" trope, an RTÉ journalist could be heard on the radio moaning that the money RTÉ pays to the FAI for television rights means players should really make themselves more available for pre-match interviews with the State broadcaster. Such a scenario, if it occurred, might fruitfully be referred to the Competition Authority.
On the other hand, you've got the extraordinary intervention in the debate by Brian Kerr's agent, Fintan Drury, who attacked an identifiable journalist when he gave an interview to Today FM: "I heard a journalist on RTÉ earlier this week saying that Brian had brought all the bad publicity on Sunday on his own head. Now, clearly that is ludicrous."
Okay, maybe it's not so extraordinary that Drury stands up for a guy in whom he's got clear friendly and financial interest, and he is of course entitled to his views. However, Drury is also, since July, chairman of the RTÉ Authority. For him to go on a rival station and specifically to criticise RTÉ while defending his client might be seen as intimidating by RTÉ employees who depend on his benevolent chairmanship. If nothing else, the episode is indicative of the mess the media is in, a baffling nexus of political and corporate power.
No wonder public "personalities" hate and fear the media, even when they don't understand it. The hatred, fear and ignorance are all evident in Mary McGuckian's hysterical, vertiginous and star-studded new film, "Rag Tale", which purports to be a uniquely realistic take on Fleet Street intrigue. Interestingly, the script was essentially improvised by a bunch of well-known actors who have presumably been on the wrong side of the tabloids, and Robbie Keane himself couldn't have come up with a more absurd caricature of the journalistic profession, with its catchcry, "Who are we gonna get this week?"
Amid the film's few conspicuous bits of genuine jargon and accidentally accurate observation – yes, a newspaper could in fact function perfectly well with its whole coterie of senior editors off on a day-long drink-and-drugs bender – is a portrait of hacks as simultaneously ludicrously amoral and stupidly principled. Thus the top staff on a British national newspaper cook up a deliberate, deceptive and illegal plot (hmmm) to entrap their own Murdoch-like chairman (oh!) so that they can protect their paper's staunch editorial line against the, uh, monarchy.
Ah, if only it were so simple…