Greybeards and seanfhondóirí who remember the ‘nineties
can’t help but to have been a little bemused by the alliance formed by Eamon
Dunphy and Pat Kelly on Pat Kenny’s radio show the other day. The Broadcasting
Authority of Ireland (BAI) has issued a code of conduct for broadcasters in
Ireland. In response, Pat and Eamon teamed up to pretty much pour scorn on the
whole idea before Michael O’Keeffe, chairman of the BAI, who didn’t really land
a glove in his own proposals’ defence over twenty minutes.
What made the mouths of those greybeards grin beneath their
grizzled whiskers was the memory of an article Eamon Dunphy wrote about Pat
Kenny on the back page of the Sunday Independent in the early-to-mid ‘nineties,
when Dunphy was the Designated Boot Boy of that particular organ.
Unfortunately, the article can’t be quoted here as research shows this blog is
sometimes read by children but take An Spailpín’s word for it – by the time
Dunphy was finished kicking the stuffing out of Plank (sic) Kenny, there wasn’t
enough of poor Pat left to put in a teaspoon and send back to his people.
Dunphy’s profile of Pat Kenny was utterly vicious. A
stomping the like of which you rarely see. Appropriate to Pol Pot, maybe, or
Stalin or Hitler. But not to TV show host who wore a jumper on his chat show.
And now here they were, kicked and kicker as bosom buddies,
defending the right of the broadcasters to make their own decisions without
interference from the dastardly BAI. Proof that principles come and go, but
show business goes on forever.
It was a pity that Michael O’Keeffe wasn’t a bit more ready
for them. He came across like a substitute teacher from whom naughty children
have detected the smell of fear, and are determined to reduce to tears in the time
allotted to them.
O’Keeffe should have pointed out that neither Kenny nor
Dunphy are against regulation, per se. It’s just that they themselves are the
ones who wanted to do the regulating, rather than someone else. Scholars will
remember the ancient world had the same attitude to slavery; people had no
objection in principle, as long as it was not they themselves who were the
actual slaves.
Kenny and Dunphy found the proposed BAI regulations too
constrictive. The found the forbidding of TV or radio show host to express his
or her own opinion terrible, one of them remarking that such a regulation would
put George Hook out of a job.
Like this would somehow be a bad thing.
And O’Keeffe took all this on the chin. What he could have
said, of course, is that there are two words that prove that the broadcasters
do indeed need a regulatory authority over them – The Frontline, and see what
Pat Kenny made of them apples.
Not much, probably, but the facts are clear. Sean Gallagher
had one foot in the Áras at half-nine on that Monday night, by midnight his head
was cut clean off. No head has rolled. Not one.
The Chairman of the RTÉ Board is married to the most
powerful spindoctor in the country. They say it doesn’t matter, because they
never talk about work at home.
[And may An Spailpín take a moment to repeat again that the
house does not belong to me. It belongs to my wife. A complete different person.
Sure I barely know the woman, I don’t know why you people in the Revenue keep busting
my nuts over it].
And so on, and on, and on. Of course it’s necessary for
journalists to hold politicians to account, but journalists are also part of
that same dance in the public square. Journalists have to be held to account
too.
The BAI proposals aren’t perfect. They may not even be good.
But that they are necessary in as clubby a society as Ireland’s is beyond all shadow
of a doubt.
