It was another week of controversies on hot social and political topics. News and current affairs programmes dealt extensively with the controversy about the relocation of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) to a site at St Vincent’s. Inherent in most debates was the unchallenged assumption that there was a clash between best medical practice and…
Easter is one of those times of the year when there’s a brief increase in religious programming – mostly the usual biblical epics, comprehensive coverage of the religious ceremonies and vigorous debates about the Good Friday pub-opening ban. One of the best this year was the film Bronx to Bradford: Friars on a Mission on…
The new census figures released last week have caused a stir, and among the aspects heavily reported have been those related to religion. I’ve noticed a concentration (even satisfaction in some quarters?) on the drop (since 2011) in the percentage of the population identifying as Catholic (from 84% to 78%) along with the 10% figure…
A perusal of radio presenters and their techniques I’d love to be completely in the dark about the personal opinions of radio presenters, I’d love them to respectfully ask the hard questions of all sides in a particular debate, to be so well informed that they know what questions to ask, and to know the…
Apart from alcohol dependency, gambling has to be one of the most destructive addictions in this country, and one that we’re way too ambiguous about. And so it was a welcome awareness-raising exercise when stand-in presenter Dr Ciara Kelly interviewed Maebh Leahy, CEO of the Rutland Centre, on Newstalk’s High Noon last week. The specific…
American politics have become much more prominent in the media since the election of Donald Trump, and I reckon it’s important to sample a variety of media sources to get a balanced picture. Dipping alternatively into CNN and Fox News certainly gives the viewer different perspectives, but of late I’ve taken to following EWTN’s News…
Prompted by the Tuam babies controversy there were more and more harrowing personal stories, testifying to times that were less compassionate and often more cruel than today. Referring to the culture of the times helps our understanding but doesn’t provide justification – Church-run institutions should have been counter-cultural, should have set a much higher standard.…
There were so many instances of classic media bias. It started with The Pat Kenny Tonight Show on TV 3, Wednesday of last week, when the topic was the Eighth Amendment, a debate prompted by last weekend’s meeting of the Citizens’ Assembly. First off there was a soft interview with a pro-choice woman who had…
Has Political Correctness Gone Mad? – a documentary with a name to draw in the curious, on Channel 4 last Thursday night. It was billed as an authored programme, an opinion piece, by Trevor Phillips, and despite advance warnings about bad language and racist terms, it was actually a reflective and relatively moderate programme. I…
It was a dizzying week, with more drama on Oireachtas TV than on any mainstream channel. It had all the features of fictional drama – moral dilemmas, cliffhanging tension, heroes (short supply), villains (don’t ask), the rise and fall of interlocking story arcs. You didn’t know from breakfast through lunch whether you’d still have a…
Brendan O’Regan