There was a hilarious moment on radio on Sunday 18 June. Gerald Barry was about to present his definitive analysis of the career of Charles Haughey when suddenly he was replaced by someone singing a jazz number. Charlie had done it once more to RTÉ, silenced them at a crucial moment. When they got back on air after the computer problems had been sorted, they played a self-regarding tape of Charlie saying how wonderful This Week was, how it was his favourite programme.
A front page story in the Sunday Independent of 18 June described public dismay and "astonishment among ordinary people" as Terry Keane sold her story to Ireland on Sunday. The publication of her account of her affair with Charles Haughey, so soon after his death, was sure to "pile further agony upon the family" and was likely to lead to a "public backlash" against Ireland on Sunday.
I guess I was barely a wet week in this wet place back in 1985 by the time various people had opened my wide American eyes: the Leader of the Opposition and Taoiseach-in-Waiting, Charles Haughey, was a scoundrel, probably a criminal, and a philanderer whose lovers could be pointed out as they made their various appearances in the media.
The print media turned venomously on Charles Haughey after his death. The tabloids salivated over gossip about his private life. But even the more sober evaluations were almost unanimously vituperative, most especially the Irish Times. In a defining news feature, published on Saturday 17 June, Peter Murtagh claimed the 1982 Haughey government represented the most serious threat to democracy since the civil war.
Vincent Browne analyses the claims
He has become a New York institution. He stands in the middle of Times Square, in his tighty-whiteys with the words "Naked Cowboy" emblazoned in blue, white and red across his buttocks. Tourists stop to take a photograph and stuff a dollar into his boots. Big boots. He can make up to a grand a day, he says.
The BBC's Panorama exposé on FIFA made the dodgy dealings of Irish councillors in the 1980s look tame in comparison, writes Dermot Bolger
Adrian Moynes, the head of RTÉ radio, was nicely filleted recently on Morning Ireland by Cathal MacCiolla. The hapless Moynes revealed by inference that the decision to remove Rattlebag from the Radio One afternoon schedule was taken by someone else – ie Ana Leddy, the head of Radio One. And as her immediate boss he had only a vague idea why she had wanted to do that or why he agreed to it.
The World Association of Newspapers held its annual conference in Moscow last week, during which Gavin O'Reilly was re-elected president. O'Reilly's re-election and his opening speech were covered by several of the papers within the Independent News and Media (INM) group – of which he is chief operating officer. His speech concentrated on criticising the excessive state control of the media in Russia.
There was a time, believe it or not, when I was a quiet, behind-the-scenes kind of guy, putting together more of the Irish Times' education supplements than I care to think about counting.
Google are gearing up to get inside inside your livingroom. In a research paper, two Google researchers, Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja, propose using ambient-audio identification technology, via your computer, to watch television with you and deliver personalised internet content at the same time.