There was a small bit of consolation last week for our old friend, Public Service Broadcasting. Into the conversation came the voice of David Puttnam, saying that he would seriously consider a suggestion by RTE’s Moya Doherty that he would chair a review of the situation.

“In an era of fake news, alternative facts and online trolls, our public service broadcasters stand as guarantors of accurate, informed and impartial information,” he said.

But like me, Lord Puttnam would know that within that statement, there is still much to be defined – and there is no better time to be doing it, now that the forces of evil which he cites, are on the march.

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And indeed one of the main reasons for this is the failure of what is generally known as “public service broadcasting”.

Most good journalists or broadcasters for example, be they in RTE or anywhere else, would automatically assume that what they do is providing some sort of a public service – at least if they are doing it right.

At the moment, this would require the adoption of at least one fundamental principle: there is no such thing as impartiality. There is just sound judgment, on the part of programme makers who are intelligent and capable enough to make decisions about who should be heard and who should not be heard.

You are not serving the public by just broadcasting the views of some crypto-fascist and having a civilised person saying the opposite. Since they are not of equal value, if you are “impartial” in this case you are actually favouring the bad guy. And worse, you are engaging in shameless hackery.

Britain is dying of Brexit because “public service broadcasters” failed on innumerable occasions to make that distinction – they stuck to their hackery, which equated the views of public-spirited people with those of bad actors.

And who decides if someone is a bad actor?

Well, if they are truly providing a public service, that is what journalists are supposed to be doing. They are not supposed to be just detached observers, making sure that all parties – including the “far right” – get equal time.

But that is what many of them have been doing.

In America too, reputable news organisations are continuing to send political correspondents to the White House – as if the Trump regime is not unlike most of the other ones which were covered in this way.

But it is unlike the other ones. Again, this is a judgment which journalists should be making. They should always be “biased” against a regime which is openly and happily “authoritarian”.

To carry on as usual in these circumstances is a monumental error on the part of members of the free press, a failure of historical dimensions – when a president or a prime minister tells you in almost everything they say and do that we would be better off without democracy as we have known it, then you don’t just show up as usual in your good suit.

Well you can. But you can’t call it journalism – be it “public service” or any other variety. And RTE is a part of this. It is still covering Trump and the far-right Johnson regime “impartially” – which is to say, badly.

Lord Puttnam spoke of the difficulty of persuading TDs to see beyond their own personal objections to RTE – and indeed we could all benefit by releasing Fine Gael and Fianna Fail TDs from the interrogations which are regarded by some as “public service broadcasting”, but which are usually so very boring. One thing about any broadcasting – if it is done right – is that it should not be boring.

Boring is almost always bad – this should be emblazoned in large letters on the walls of every broadcasting institution. And I think Lord Puttnam knows this, because as an Englishman, he would have a special attachment to the glories of the BBC, which had at its core the idea that a programme of high seriousness can also be entertaining – that in fact if it wasn’t entertaining, then it wouldn’t be taken seriously.

This takes talent – but you know, places like RTE are supposed to have talent. They’re not supposed to have this regiment of managers on six-figure salaries engaging incessantly in corporate bullshit. And pretending that hackery is the same thing as “public service broadcasting”.

Indeed, the greatest exemplar of public service broadcasting in the true sense was Gay Byrne, who was breaking about 40 iron rules of hackery on every show, refusing to be constrained by his “brief”, knowing that the people deserved more than to hear him refereeing a game between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael – and that if you are not trying to reach the widest audience, even with “difficult” material, then you will probably end up reaching nobody.

Likewise David Puttnam produced films which featured scenes of life in a Turkish prison and the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge, and they made a profit at the box office.

No better man.

Niall Toibin refused to indulge that Inner Eejit which we must all confront

In his stand-up analysis of the Midlands personality, Niall Toibin said there is a line they use around Athlone, that someone is “as thick as the man from Coosan”.

Not only did some of my ancestors come from Coosan, I went to primary school there — I received my education in a place supposedly fabled for its profound stupidity.

But I let it go, as I was a fan of Toibin’s brilliant characterisations of various Irish types, and I interviewed him on two occasions — the first time for a Christmas edition of Hot Press, which must have gone well because I had another crack at it for this paper.

“Phlegmatic” was his other way of describing the Midlands persona, and again he argued that this could be exchanged for “thick”.

“Phlegmatic”, though, was extraordinarily good — he nailed us right there, as we looked up the dictionary to find that it means “an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition”.

Was there ever a person from those low-lying lands who did not have at least some of that in them?

The story he told was of two Midlanders passing a naked man on the side of the road, a man who has escaped from an institution — their only words to him were: “hardy man”.

Yes, I think Midlanders do have this tendency to mind our own business, when it may not be entirely wise, or in the best interests of society as a whole.

Toibin saw through us all, and he had this other quality that was unusual in any man who had to make his living in part on the Irish cabaret scene — there was no eejitry in him.

This was probably why I wanted to interview him not once but twice, though I hadn’t really worked that out at the time — there was this fierce intelligence in him, a refusal to indulge that Inner Eejit which we must all confront at some stage of our lives.

He had this uncompromising thing about him, and yet he was generous too, if he found something funny. The main things I remember about those interviews were his talking about giving up the drink — he felt he had left himself with little choice in the matter — and the difficulty of parking in Dublin.

Yes, the mind is indeed a strange thing — especially if it was trained in Coosan — but it has stayed with me, this memory of Niall Toibin describing his various strategies for finding a good parking space in the city.

He wasn’t joking about it, that was the thing — he was chatting away about how this place was better than that place, like a man whose wonderful mind had been quietly occupied by these everyday complications, and he was finding a way to deal with it.

A way that could probably best be described as… phlegmatic.

As a retired drinker, I guess he figured it was great to have such problems — it was all great.

Writing’s on the wall for Ireland as they almost look like winners

You know the way that football managers sometimes use a dismissive newspaper article to motivate their team? You know how they say that they can pin that negative article on the dressing room wall and “that will do the team talk for me”?

Usually the pinning up of the article is an unintended consequence — the person who wrote it didn’t actually mean it to finish up as inspirational quotes for this team that he doesn’t rate too highly.

But let us bring something new to the game here, let us do this on purpose for a change, because Ireland are going to need all the help they can get tomorrow night against Denmark — and we might as well do our bit.

We know that Mick McCarthy is sensitive to stuff written about him and the team. Indeed, that is one of his weaknesses as a manager. That he would actually be influenced in any way by the views of journalists — even if it’s to defy them by not doing what they want him to do — goes some way towards explaining why we’re as bad as we are.

Though the main reason is that we’re just bad.

On Morning Ireland last week football correspondent Tony O’Donoghue said that David McGoldrick had almost scored for Sheffield United last weekend. It was the VAR that thwarted him but still…

We accepted the fact that McGoldrick had “almost scored” as a good thing, a sign that he was as ready for this big game as he will ever be — because the best we’re expecting is that he’ll almost score for us too.

Mick will want him to “do a job”. He will want all the lads to “do a job” — and if at the end they almost score, all the better. But to actually score… you’d need to be calling up your Cristiano Ronaldo for that — and even Cristiano Ronaldo wouldn’t be backing himself if he had James McClean feeding him the ammunition, would he?

No I don’t think so.

In fact, in the absence of any other realistic chances of actually scoring and actually winning an important game, our only hope is the kind of voodoo you get from pinning articles up on the dressing room wall.

You’re welcome.

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