My colleague John Waters has recently been denigrating his own trade, namely journalism: "Once the stuff of which dreams were made, this has become a disgraceful profession, practised by thugs and voyeurs, and nowhere is it worse than it is in Ireland."
Some people will consider this a bit harsh, but those of us involved in it know it as the truth. These days, nothing beats a national Irish daily newsroom for seediness, sexual perversion and repressed violence; and even here in the soggier end of the trade, the features area, traditionally inhabited by shrill feminists, weedy bespectacled bluestockings and wimpy men (not always distinguishable groupings), none of whom would recognise a hard news story if they fell over it, the thuggery and voyeurism are rampant. And on the rare occasion we need added backbone, brutal determination and sheer macho aggression in this office, we have the sports department right beside us.
In The Irish Times, you mess with the fourth floor at your peril.
When John Waters was growing up, he tells us, a journalist was "something to be", and he admired practitioners like John D. Sheridan, Con Houlihan, John Healy, John Pilger and Keith Waterhouse. I admired the same people, but being a bit before John's time, I learned somewhat disappointingly that the average journalist was earning, in a good week, about half as much as a county council road worker, without anything like the same esteem (or job security). And that was in Dublin. Over in the west of Ireland, you could make more in a week snatching salmon from the Moy (if it weren't illegal, which it unfortunately was) than you could in a year on the local journals.
In fact, while no surveys were available, it seemed to me in the 1960s that in terms of public esteem and cash income, journalists occupied a place somewhere between rat-catchers and lavatory cleaners. Prostitutes didn't come into it because (a) there weren't any, and (b) they earned more.
Nevertheless, when I "grew up" I still found myself unable to resist the lure of a job in newspapers, and even my mother and her copious tears failed to dissuade me. "Come on now, Mom," I recall saying by way of consolation, "it's no worse than playing the piano in a bordello".
That seemed to set her mind at rest.
The money and conditions are greatly improved now, of course, but journalists continue to be held in low esteem. We are aware of this: it goes with the territory, we are wont to say, shrugging our shoulders while the bright boyish smiles creasing our faces hide the bitter inner grief, pain, humiliation and self-loathing. Thugs and voyeurs, thugs and voyeurs.
That's not to mention the drink problems or personal relationship inadequacies endemic to the trade. Is it any wonder we are experts on these topics when research material is sitting all around us every day?
An MRBI poll four or five years back showed, interestingly enough, that even in the ratings of esteem in which women are regarded by other women, female journalists were at the bottom of the list, rating only 27 per cent, just lower than women politicians (33 per cent). Held in the highest esteem were full-time wives and mothers (75 per cent), followed by office cleaners at 55 per cent.
There may have been a touch of political correctness about all this but it is sad all the same. Some might ask why, if Irish journalism has sold out to the thugs and voyeurs, the interest in getting into the trade has never been greater. Either young people are not being taken aside and told the truth by their parents, or they are not paying attention to the media, which you would imagine would be a prerequisite for getting into the game. The only other explanations can be that (a) applicants are well aware of media realities and are actually quite keen to become thugs and voyeurs, or (b) cash compensates for everything, or (c) fame is the spur, or (d) all of the above.
The only cheering aspect of the whole business is that the "thugs and voyeurs" theory will provide a fresh topic of debate for the ever-expanding area of media studies, though hardly as important as, for example, analysing soap operas as a form of American cultural imperialism, or isolating the neo-Marxist imperative informing the television game show. The debate might usefully be kicked off by suggesting that if the Irish media really have been taken over by thugs and voyeurs, then those at the receiving end, i.e. readers, listeners and viewers, are no more than willing victims and exhibitionists. Discuss.
