A tale of two very different interviews
INTRODUCING a debate on the abortion referendum on last Sunday’s Marian Finucane Show, the eponymous presenter began with a plea: “As everybody says, let’s hope we keep the cool ear.”
Does everybody really say that? Does anybody, Marian aside, say it at all? Google certainly doesn’t recognise the phrase.
Still, the audience surely understood the RTE woman’s meaning, as she told participants: “Particularly I would ask people to not talk over each other, because it drives listeners mad, and it drives me mad.” She largely got her wish. It was a lively, but civilised, debate, though retired judge Catherine McGuinness did sour the atmosphere somewhat by accusing Iona Institute head David Quinn of thinking of “Irish mothers as a race that has to be controlled from outside”. It’s a wonder that the Yes side still resorts to these outrageous slanders on No supporters when they’ve proved so disastrously counterproductive.
Marian Finucane handled the debate dexterously enough to avoid accusations of partiality, and right now that’s not so easy. Potential bias by broadcasters is being actively sought out by campaigners on both sides of th Eight debate.
On last Wednesday’s The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk, Maria Steen of the Iona Institute was given a chance to respond to the previous morning’s interview with Yes campaigner Dr Peter Boylan. She began by telling Pat: “You threw softball questions to him yesterday.”
“Now, now, Maria, enough,” a clearly rattled Kenny responded, before going on to claim that “this programme was targeted yesterday in some sort of organised way” and that it was all “very curious”. Steen insisted that she had “the greatest respect for you as a broadcaster, I think you’re one of the finest broadcasters in the country, but I do think it was unfair... I’m very happy to answer hard questions, but it’s only fair that the other side gets grilled too.”
Was she right to say that Boylan was given an easier time by Newstalk? There was, without question, a markedly different tone to Pat’s approach on the two days. He should park the umbrage and reflect on it.
By welcome contrast, this week’s Lyric Feature was a profile of the lesser-known multiinstrumentalist and composer Jolyon Jackson, a stalwart of the Dublin music scene in the 1970s. His group, Supply, Demand & Curve, was one of the few Irish purveyors at that time (or, indeed, since) of jazz fusion in the style of Soft Machine or Weather Report, though, as one contributor noted, “I’m not sure if Ireland would have been acclimatised to it yet… unless they were jazz heads.”
The producer and presenter of this excellent documentay was Peter Curtin, of the late night Groovers' Corner show on RTE digital station 2XM. Poignantly, it ended woth its subject talking eagerly about the various projects on which he was then working, predicting: "I'll be doing this when I'm old and grey." In fact, he died of cancer in 1985 at the age of 38. Hidden Ground, as the programme was called, taking its name from a seminal album recorded with fiddler Paddy Glackin, made a persuasive case for Jackson's rediscovery.
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