Radio Review/Harry Browne: I get so fed up with the whole hardened-hack routine. If you want journalists who believe that changing the world is possible and desirable, you probably want ones that also sound a bit wide-eyed and idealistic.
How about the BBC's Tim Vickery, speaking in the wee hours of Monday morning on Up All Night (BBC Radio 5 Live, nightly) about "the fantastically redemptive power of journalism". Amen, brother - you testify. What was Tim talking about? Well, South American soccer, actually, and how safe it is for visiting tourists to attend matches down there (an off-peak radio topic, to be sure).
Okay, you ask, but where's the redemption? You see, Tim has been held up at gunpoint only once during all his football-attending forays, as he left a stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Wise man that he is, Vickery handed over all his money. But the very next day he filed a report on the frightening crime for the BBC World Service, "and I made far more money for doing that than I lost in the mugging". Beautiful, huh? Tear to the twitching media eye? I thought not. It turns out that "the fantastically redemptive power of journalism" is a cynical (and rather good) joke about the funny ways we make our money.
And then again, sometimes it's not. I was reading this week in the Washington Post about radio journalist Amy Goodman, a hero to this column for her work on the syndicated Democracy Now! programme (www.democracynow.org). Four years ago she attended a swish Overseas Press Club dinner in Washington - she didn't buy a ticket, but sat at the back long enough to collect her award for a documentary about Nigeria.
Except that she didn't. Collect it, that is. So disgusted was she at the servility of an elite-media audience who applauded the keynote speaker, US secretary of state Richard Holbrooke, even as he announced the bombing of a Belgrade TV station, Goodman came to the podium, turned to compere Tom Brokaw, and said: "Thank you, Mr. Brokaw, but no thank you." It seems it is possible to take journalism seriously.
How to harness the power of the press to effect positive change is one of the enduring mysteries of the trade - kind of like "how can David Hanly actually tell when he needs to clear his throat?" or "how does Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) get so much mileage out of You're A Star?" This week, Joe Duffy's programme continued its obsessional attachment to the Eurovision-song process by first breaking, then - as it were - repairing the controversy over the winning song's, em, familiarity.
Liveline got one of the Olsen fellas from Denmark who wrote the winning song from a couple of years back to listen to a wonderfully-edited montage of his number and the new Irish entry. Jurgen and Joe got into a virtual giggly fit, though at least one of them managed to maintain clear and perfect English. The Dane (for it was he) said: "I think when Fly on the Wings of Love was flying across Europe, the writer of this new song was up in the air with it." However, Olsen agreed that there was no question of plagiarism, and the writer of We've got the World, Keith Molloy, came on the phone to join the happy crew.
Such is Liveline's confidence these days that I fully expect Joe is trying to line up Saddam and Dubbya for a special Paddy's Day peace-and-reconciliation programme. It could only be an improvement on the sorry spectacle of Irish politicians in Washington, apparently compelled to treat Bush as though he were an instrument of our peace. Today in the Oireachtas (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) gave us (too little of) Joe Higgins excoriating the Taoiseach, then Bertie "making no apology" for admiring what the US "stands for in the world".
It's one of those phrases made meaningless through repetition, though users who are pressed on the subject are usually too shy to cite America's stature as a military and economic juggernaut, and so move on to phrases such as "world's greatest democracy".
Actually, the US is self-evidently a political basket-case: in the last three decades it has had a president driven from office for his crimes, another impeached for his private life, another who was guided by his wife's astrologer. The travesty of the "election" of the current sorry incumbent should have highlighted the fact that the basis of US federal governance is fundamentally undemocratic - structures such as the electoral college and the Senate weren't even state-of-the-democratic-art in 1787, but represented compromises with elitist elements among the "founding fathers".
They have scarcely been improved in the centuries since. Then there's the intervening influence of money, the corporate media, etc. Maybe, Bertie, we should tone down the admiration and go for a little tough love?