What I Read This Week: More Murdoch bombshells and an Irish cinema trailblazer

Hello from my sofa, where after a week of writing, podcasting, despairing, taxi-flagging (an activity related to the despair) and getting obsessive about words and sentences long after I should have moved on from them, I’m counting on the Olympics to provide some weekend diversion.

This was, for me, a television-focused week in which the Government finally – and somewhat anti-climactically – published its plans for public media funding. As a result, I was one of six journalists to do one-to-one interviews with RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst on his Thursday afternoon media round.

I also spoke via Zoom with another broadcasting boss for an as yet unwritten article, scanned the newly published BBC annual report and used my commutes to fantasy-cast Apple’s future adaptation of the novel of the summer, Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Long Island Compromise.

Here’s a selection of what else I have been reading:

What I Read This Week: The real meaning of Donald Trump’s speech and the Derry girls having a moment

What I Read This Week: Chaos in France and the challenge of untangling art from the artist

What I Read This Week: ‘Brilliant writing is all about small details’

1 Succession may be over, but as far as the family saga that inspired the TV drama is concerned, the bombshells keep coming. The New York Times revealed that Rupert Murdoch has been engaged in a secret legal war against three of his children over the future of the family media empire as he seeks “to preserve it as a conservative political force after his death”. My favourite line in this detailed scoop, republished by The Irish Times, is the one where daughter Elisabeth Murdoch is described as trying to “position herself as the ‘Switzerland’ of the family, maintaining good relations with all”.

2 People can remember where they were when they heard the news about Eamonn Casey’s resignation as Bishop of Galway on May 7th, 1992, writes Ed Power in his review of Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets, a powerful documentary by RTÉ in association with the Irish Mail on Sunday. I was making my Confirmation that morning and I’m told the shock of the emerging controversy – which then concerned Casey’s relationship with Annie Murphy – was fairly plain inside the church. We now know that was the least of it. Anne Sheridan’s painstaking work documenting multiple complaints of childhood sexual abuse against Casey is, Ed writes, “important public service broadcasting”.

3 Una Mullally is in New York, where she can sense an edge of “rumbling terror” amid the threat that Americans might actually re-elect Donald Trump and with him his “Machiavellian vice-president pick, JD Vance”. Friends ask her what it’s like being in the US during the heightened atmosphere of its presidential election campaign: “As an outsider dropping in, what it’s like is living in a history book, if that history book had turned into a flip book and was then set on fire,” Una writes.

Ellen O’Mara Sullivan: co-founder and main funder of the first indigenous film company in Ireland.

4 Sometimes when I watch films from the 1930s or 1940s, I’ll look up the older actors on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database), see that they were born in the 1870s and marvel at how they have time-travelled to the present via the magic of Hollywood. Mary Rose Callaghan’s piece on the role of her grandmother, Ellen O’Mara Sullivan, in the birth of Irish film, is a reminder, however, of just how young film is as an art form. Her story is also another example of how the contribution of women has been so often overlooked.

5 I was told to “give a hint of a behind-the-scenes feel” showing what it’s like to work in The Irish Times in this round-up, so I’m going to take the opportunity to exclusively reveal that it’s hot – as in warm. Too warm? Well, let’s just say I have for months now been advocating that all staff collectively take to wearing shorts around the office in the hope that the sight of so many journalists’ legs might expedite the advent of cooler workplace conditions. For the shorts-curious among us, Marie Kelly has some style tips for a wardrobe item that can “automatically imply enthusiasm and energy”. Good news, finally.

ICYMI

Orla Barry is an artist and shepherd – there can’t be too many people with that combination on their LinkedIn. She’s also the subject of a new documentary, Notes from Sheepland, by director Cara Holmes. Tara Brady spoke to Barry and Holmes about this “portrait of an artist as a farmer” for a feature that also explores the history of sheep in visual art.

Podcast of the Week

As a Washington-based chief presenter for BBC News, former RTÉ journalist Caitríona Perry was front and centre on flagship BBC bulletins this week after Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic presidential nominee and endorsed Kamala Harris. Perry also spoke to Róisín Ingle on The Women’s Podcast about all things Kamala, including the meaning of pop star Charli XCX’s “Kamala IS brat” endorsement of Harris.

America’s first female president? All eyes on Kamala Harris

Listen | 30:04

Best of the rest

The BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing scandal has joined an all-too-long list of incidents of mistreatment and bullying in the making of some of the most successful television shows this century. The Hollywood Reporter places a spotlight on some of the industry “culture” issues at work here and asks if reality TV can be both entertaining and ethical.

The week ahead

Never say to a journalist “enjoy the bank holiday weekend”. The chances are they will not be enjoying it but spending it desperately trying to cobble together stories while everyone else is – in our heads – doing something amazing in the sun. For the August bank holiday weekend, however, I will be doing something amazing in the sun: making my first visit to Stade Roland Garros in Paris for a little personal Olympic tennis break. What’s happening between now and then? Lots of grim stuff, probably.

What I Read This Week: More Murdoch bombshells and an Irish cinema trailblazer

Laura Slattery on the stories that caught her eye from the Strictly Come Dancing scandal to shorts in the office