Too many voices spoil broadcasting broth

‘ONE voice!” That was the cry of former RTE presenter Andy O’Mahony when he used to front The Sunday Show. The programme which now occupies that slot, The Marian Finucane Show, kept its predecessor’s habit of inviting multiple guests to review the papers. Unless they’re familiar voices, it can be difficult to follow who’s who and who’s saying what.

Marian welcomed five guests last Sunday, all perfectly well-mannered even as they discussed contentious issues such as the “Jobstown Six”, but five does still feel like too many contributors to make for a joined up conversation. Newstalk’s Yates On Sunday sticks with three panellists for the newspaper review, which gives each of them a fairer chance to explain their views.

Among them last weekend was Paul Murphy TD, fresh from his acquittal on charges of the false imprisonment of former Labour leader Joan Burton. Ivan Yates pressed him on the legitimacy of the controversial protest in Jobstown back in Nove mb er20N14ig— ella du Lr aiwnsgownhHiic hi en th de ate hr cei nam Tan ai stew asd dee c sr tireud mb rye mloc in ale ssats,i“l amnoedfifaing Ct hat rhym esq wu ai thu rpauunttf”,ua gs it Ya at tue r sn np ku kt lit in euphemistic terms that wouldn’t exactly need a master code breaker to decipher — but Murphy also had the space in which to answer. The dialogue had a shape.

The Moral Maze on BBC Radio Four last Wednesday asked whether there’s a higher moral value to working in the public, as opposed to the private, sector.

“Nothing to do with working for the State makes you good,” insisted Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas bluntly, especially when such workers are not only already better paid, but are far more likely to be middle managers and administrators than police officers, nurses or firemen.

Dr Jamie Whyte, former leader of a profree market, classical liberal political party in New Zealand, went further, arguing that this myth of public sector virtue has been to the detriment of better services.

“The great thing about the private sector,” he noted, “is that there’s a mechanism for eliminating failure, namely that you go out of business, and this is the mechanism which gets things to work properly”. If the public sector saw those who use its services as customers in the same way, it would work more effectively, thereby increasing the common good.

So does that not ultimately make the private sector ethos more ethical?

Presenter Michael Buerk and his guests didWna’ tt cf in Id th Ne solution to that q uH east rd ioynB.uI ct k’ ss ni soot nth th aetRk Tin EdP loaf yesrhuonwti . l But onDl ye cbeym be irn3g0w;r it le li.i neg/ pt lao yaesrk the question wiS ll ixwN ea it niocnh sR aung yb cy li os so ent3o Pal an year nusnw tie lr.

DLeacsetmSbu er n1d6a;yt’vs3M.ieo/opnlaeyyerGoes Wild onSRimTp El yR Naigdei lola O is no en rBaBis Ce id Play ne re q-u cu ar lr leynt ly pen rot it naevn at ilaq bu lee rtoy:v“ieW we hr as tina rI er et lahn ed. chances of an asteroid crashing into Earth, and could we really suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs 66 million years ago?”

The short answer is that it might happen at some point in the future, but it’s not something over which you should lose sleep. Whether anyone was worrying about it before Derek Mooney put the idea in their heads is another matter. LISTEN BACK Visit the RTE Player at rte.ie/player and newstalk.com/listen-back