PANNING down from a silhouette of the griffon which guards the entrance to London's Fleet Street, the camera lingered on a jumble of tabloids in the gutter. The griffon, symbolically a watchful overseer, seemed hopelessly remote from the gutter press. With a couple of images, Network First's Breaking The Mirror: The Murdoch Effect had set an elegiac tone.
More specifically, it had set a Pilgeric tone - a mix of hagiography and polemic - forged by John Pilger, the most established anti-establishment journalist in Britain. The Pilgeric tone is a combination of lament and anger and even if it is true that Pilger often casts those he likes as suspiciously saintly, those he detests invariably deserve all the scorn he can muster.
Reflecting on The Mirror, Pilger rightly blamed The Sun for its demise. Nothing original in that, of course. But, some truths are worthy of repetition and it is true that gutter journalism, whether it's presented in tabloid or broadsheet form, is increasingly pervasive and repulsive. The usual counter- charge, made by the producers of the sleaze, that people who bemoan the tabloidisation of the press are just stiff, sanctimonious snobs, is made, fundamentally, not in the interests of readers, but in the interests of proprietors and their sycophantic editorial minions.
Knowing this, Pilger reserved most of the nitric acid in his pen for Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell. Fair enough, but everybody knows that the principal goal of media proprietors is profit. Not that that excuses Maxwell's theft, lies and fraud or that it validates Murdoch's megalomaniac project to run the media for himself. But, what of the hacks, especially the executive ones and their proclaimed calling for truth, justice and the honourable way?
What of them indeed? Former Mirror editor Roy Greenslade could say that "Maxwell just told lies all the time - it was second nature to him" yet couldn't bring himself to apologise to Arthur Scargill for running an utterly false yarn about Scargill being backed by Libyan money. But at least he spoke to Pilger.
Not so the company's group chief, David Montgomery, who, we were told, refused to participate because he said the programme would disturb "public reverence" for The Mirror. Still, with delicious sarcasm, Montgomery's noble message was relayed to the visual accompaniment of the paper's imbecilic and racist "Achtung! Surrender" page one splash before the Euro `96 match between England and Germany.
Certainly, the old Daily Mirror was a campaigning and relevant paper. It did, of course, like every paper ever printed, have its share of trivia and nonsense too. And yes, it was a creature of its time just as the current sub-Sun Mirror is a creature of today. When Murdoch bought the Sun in 1969 he forged, as Pilger pointed out, a paper which foretold the world of television and the world of Thatcherism".
With the rise of television and its surpassing of print as the main source of news, the demand for full-service popular print journalism was eroded. There would have to be changes and the Sun stole a march on the Mirror by aggressive marketing and by turning itself into a scandal sheet for television". Eventually the Mirror followed suit, employing a succession of former Murdoch editors to over.see the sexualisation and sleazification of news.
With this latest authored documentary from John Pilger, Network First showed how so much of the popular press has capitulated to sex and sleaze. People on strike and old people and poor people and foreign people are routinely ignored or treated with contempt. Capital is, overwhelmingly, the dominant determinant. Perhaps Pilger ought to have been less reverential towards old Mirror hacks such as Hugh Cudlipp, Keith Waterhouse and Marje Proops. They and their journalism flourished in a different time and "golden age" myths are cosy and dangerous anyway.
But that's just a "perhaps". What is certain is that the toadying careerists for Maxwell, Murdoch and, by extension, for some proprietors closer to home, got off too lightly. Still, there's hope: young people interviewed by Pilger refuted the argument that gutter journalism just "gives what want". They didn't want it. Maybe young people don't want much journalism at all. But better none at all than the mountains of rubbish which are produced every day. Unusually for Pilger, this one was, if anything, understated.
THE arguments on What Really Matters weren't so much understated as undermined by a reluctance to stress context. Focusing on church v state in post-Catholic Ireland", the debate's line-up, appropriately, could have been expressed like a divorce case: Quinn v Quinn. In the State corner was Ruairi Quinn; fighting for the church was David Quinn, the Thatcherite (on economic issues, anyway) editor of the Irish Catholic.
At its core, the debate focused on the differences, relative benefits and relative drawbacks of an authoritarian church and an authoritarian state. Fair enough, so far as it goes. But what really matters is authoritarian capital and it was too conveniently ignored by the Quinns. In fairness, a priest in the studio audience did suggest that money is the new hierarchy. But, by then, the programme was almost over.
Studio-bound, with Olivia O'Leary as the presenter/compere/referee, this was a very cheap 50 minutes for RTE. But, in fairness, though it was firmly rooted in the Montrose tradition of televised radio programmes, it wasn't the most inane or offensive talk-telly that RTE has produced. Quinn, David, did rather whinge somewhat about the treatment of committed Catholics in contemporary Ireland. Quinn, Ruairi, rejected his opponent's arguments about - "the nanny state".
In the audience, Father Arthur O'Neill of Rathnew Co Wicklow said, in reference to the new hierarchy, that the plain purple belly-band has been replaced by the multi-coloured tie adding that "the soutane has been replaced by the Armani suit.. Well, the point was made, but interpreted Father O'Neill's contribution, the media, which might reasonably be construed as "the new hierarchy".
Unlike the Pilger documentary, which did recognise that big business is the dominant determinant for the institutions of society, What Really Matters neglected, either deliberately or otherwise, this crucial frame of reference. Both of the Quinns were right in saying that in "post-Catholic" Ireland (though the term is merely relative and, arguably, premature) that there have been changes "for better and for worse". But, like the tabloid rubbish which Pager raged against, that is hardly news.
RECALLING pre post-Catholic Ireland, Would You Believe? focused on the live Faith Of Our Fathers concert at the Point Depot. The revival of the old hymns has, of course, more to do with nostalgia than with a renewal of traditional Irish Catholicism. But, there has always been an element of revelry as well as reverence attached to communal singing and even to the solo singing of hymns known to entire communities.
Remember that, back in the 1960s, Brendan Bowyer used to bellow out the odd hymn at dances. From this distance, this seems like very odd behaviour in deed, but in pre-"E" Ireland, dancers, seemed to have little difficulty in mixing reverence and revelry. The soulful music consumers who hold up cigarette lighters at pop concerts, are scarcely any different, though almost all of them would cringe at the comparison.
Footage of the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, of Corpus Christi pro cessions from 40 years ago and of a trenchant rendition of Faith O Our Fathers in Croke Park in 1954, recalled an Ireland that is almost dead. Still, on the bus from Rostrevor, Co Down, local people, travelling to The Point concert belted out the old hymns with gusto. The nationalism, which was always a backbeat to such sung religious fervour, renders these hymns as a form of respectable rebel songs, especially in the North.
The trenchantly genteel Englishness of Songs Of Praise is no different. There is nationalism in them too. Now, in this duped era of yuppie individualism, the characteristic voices are the voices of business. Smarmy - in a pseudo caring and confidential tone, the ubiquitous voices of advertising and public relations -and media gloss get away with little criticism. The old hymns were, in some ways, anthems to reinforce self-enslavement. The new business propaganda is no different - except that it hasn't even gusto.
THE most remarkable footage of the week was on Tuesday's Prime Time. Home-video of some of Ireland's most viciously intrepreneurial "new hierarchy" showed a group in a plush, large jazuzzi/ small swimming pool drinking a toast to Veronica Guerin. "Crime doesn't pay," laughed one. The video was unearthed (or un-underworlded) by an American network.
But it showed the power of television in a positive light. As well as facilitating the turning of newspapers into sleazy rags, televisions can sometimes have an impact which the printed word cannot match. We can all read about the lavish lifestyles of Dublin criminals - usually with ridiculously glamourising nicknames - but seeing this party of revellers in action rammed home the point.
So did the final episode of, The Joy, heavily populated now by the victims of entrepreneurial lads with the glamorous nicknames. Donald Taylor Black's four-part series was one of RTE's better decisions. Given the access required, there was always going to be a heavy seepage of PR. But, that said the fact that the series was made and transmitted was com mendable.
Like John Pilger's polemic, The Joy had, at times, an elegiac tone. It couldn't but have, given that it used the plaintive prison anthem The Auld Triangle as its themes' tune, In post-Catholic Ireland, the dominant morality is the morality of acquisition. That's the way most people want it. But part of the rice for that is, inevitably, a rise in crime. As followers of Rupert Murdoch could tell you "there's no such thing as a free lunch. The new hierarchy has seen to that.