Radio Review/Harry Browne: Few Irish reporters covered themselves in glory early this week in their coverage of the arrest of Seán Ó Muireagáin in the West Bank.
The media's usual high levels of credulousness when it comes to "official sources" were probably boosted further by a seasonal short-staffed summer-Sunday appetite for the easy story, "ripped and read" from a foreign wire service.
Around our radio on Sunday evening we were still cursing the RTÉ newsroom's stupid, lazy, hourly description of the Iraqi Governing Council as "American-backed" - it is manifestly American-appointed, or even American-created - when the "news" came through that a "Real IRA man" with bomb-making expertise had been arrested by the Israelis. Sadly, my words to the wireless ("he could be a solidarity activist with the wrong name or connections") were not recorded for posterity, but if cautionary sirens could go off in a Kimmage sittingroom, what was happening in Montrose?
By Tuesday evening, with the truth revealed, RTÉ Northern editor Tommie Gorman was minimising the original error, and ensuring himself a place in the week's crowded Hall of Shame by pointing out that several "reputable media organisations" had carried the same erroneous story on Monday morning (if they were following RTÉ's Sunday evening lead, he didn't say), and that the "basic mistake" had been made by the media's police and intelligence sources, not by reporters for believing them so completely and, in many cases, without any attribution.
Gorman's "all the kids were doing it" defence doesn't survive a review of Monday's Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday). This was out on its own among reputable media organisations in its eagerness to convict the still-unnamed Shin Bet prisoner, and indeed to see who else it could send down with him. (The exception was the notably cautious Caroline Murphy in It Says in the Papers.) The report from Israel in the news bulletin was bad enough in its definitive defamations - "He is linked to the Real IRA . . . expert bomb-maker . . . fundraising mission . . . detailed knowledge of bomb-making" - interrupted by a cursory, pro-forma "he has denied the allegations". But the real fun started at a quarter past seven, when the presumably reputable Thomas O'Dwyer from the International Herald Tribune started laying it on thick, utterly undiluted by a bewildered-sounding David Hanly.
O'Dwyer's breathless spy-novel style is risible in retrospect, now that we know Ó Muireagáin was an innocent political visitor, wandering unaware of the alarm bells his name had set off. "They managed to nab this guy on a British intelligence tip-off," O'Dwyer cheered, pausing to note what a timely boost it was for Anglo-Israeli relations. He wandered further into the realm of Hollywood screenwriting when he stated, again definitively, that the arrested man was "a protégé of one of the men detained in Colombia". O'Dwyer named one of the Colombia Three - which one is irrelevant, since the story is clearly fanciful - and described categorically this man's alleged former role in the Provisionals and possible South American mission for the Reals, a torrent of unsubstantiated slurs that would make a politician blush. This, perhaps, tells us something about post-9/11 standards for terrorism-related stories in reputable US media organisations; let's hope (against hope) RTÉ doesn't sink to their level again.
A more benign Northern-based fiction was The Greenhouse (BBC Radio 4, Friday). Dominique Moloney's radio play about race relations in a Belfast suburb wasn't short on journalistic simplifications and short-cuts, and, like MI5's effort, it landed one of its main characters in prison; but its heart was in the right place and occasionally it packed an upsetting dramatic punch.
The set-up was familiar enough: sensitive, arty teenage Jason struggles to escape the oppressive, violent male-bonding world that his older brother has made in the vacuum left by a dead father and alcoholic mother. (Jason wails: "Why can't we be like other people, with lights on, music playing, things to talk about?") He gets his chance after the brother gets him to take part in a racist assault on a black neighbour's garden, convincing him partly by playing on other bigotries: "We got enough trouble keepin' the Taigs in check. You're turning into a real poofter, you are." Caught by a damn good cop, Jason gets to know the middle-aged black woman whose beautiful greenhouse he must repair, their friendship growing (like a flower, ya know) thanks to his artistic talent and charmingly demotic line in slagging: "Have you got something stuck between your teeth?" "No." "You will in a minute."
Soapy clichés aside, The Greenhouse flowered with performances from Neal McWilliams and Adjoa Andoh (of TV's Casualty), and vivid writing that made even its over-the-top elements compelling.