Connect: An elderly woman tied to her nursing home bed. A member of the catering staff giving medication. Residents being ignored when they called for attention. A 72-year-old man given pills he didn't want. Dreadful hygiene. Residents wearing winter clothes in bed to keep warm. Shocking allegations about Irish nursing homes, reported in The Irish Times almost two years ago.
Long before Monday's Prime Time Investigates went undercover in Leas Cross nursing home, the information about the standard of care in such homes was out there. But the film wasn't. Even if a newspaper had infiltrated a nursing home and splashed the story across several pages it could not have had such an impact. Just under half a million people watched Prime Time, few of whom will have seen a bed sore before and almost certainly never in such gruesome detail.
It was unbearable at times, making it a programme that provoked not just a psychological, but also a physical response. All week, people have been saying they could hardly watch; that they couldn't get the images out of their mind. Print media could only follow in its substantial wake, responding with subsidiary revelations and a sense of outrage to match that of their readers.
For all the reaction to it, it was an imperfect programme. It is disturbing that a chef can be drafted in to care for patients, but he is as unqualified as most of the nation's nursing home staff. The programme could have asked more of what we should expect from a system in which we place elderly in the care of untrained, low-wage workers. Nor should we ignore the aesthetic of the hidden camera footage. It has a particular look to it - smudged glare, blurred faces, subtitled dialogue and the rustle of fabric on the microphone - that exaggerates the mood. With RTÉ2's Naked Camera, the technology exaggerated the comedy. Here it couldn't help but embellish the horror.
Yet, Prime Time Investigates has been excellent in picking up scraps of stories and putting them together; in taking issues from the ether and making them tangible. Monday night's programme was outstanding and brave journalism.
The hidden camera approach is not without risks, as a BBC reporter found out when he was recently rumbled while posing as a hospital employee. And its long-term impact may prove unprecedented. There was a time when The Late Late Show could set the news agenda, when a guest's passing remark could explode into the headlines. Now, it is largely a rest-stop for touring authors and low-wattage stars, and Prime Time is RTÉ's flagship.
It also illustrates the ability of the State broadcaster to dictate the headlines. The threatened injunction against the Leas Cross programme prevented it this time, but Questions and Answers often has a questioner and panellist briefed and ready only minutes after Prime Time has covered an issue (even, as Brian Cowen admitted recently, if they haven't watched the tape sent to them). If you miss that programme, then you may hear about the issue on the following day's Morning Ireland, watch the Taoiseach's response in the Dáil, catch it on the lunchtime news, listen to the irate callers on Liveline, follow the story on Five-Seven Live and see the fallout on Tuesday night's Prime Time. By which point the rest of the media will have followed suit to some degree. Of late, Monday night has become a big night for news, which has broken with the regularity of a geyser.
This makes Prime Time a valuable content generator as well as publicity magnet. It attracts decent ratings too. An average of 443,000 viewers watched this current series. It is regularly in the top three ratings: 800,000 tuned in to last year's investigation into alleged Garda tactics, The Force of the Law. That put it ninth in the annual ratings, sandwiched between the All-Ireland Hurling Final and an episode of EastEnders. For a broadcaster continually asked to defend the licence fee, Prime Time is now indispensable.
Yet, until recently, there was a coterie within RTÉ keen to shunt it into a lesser slot. It was clogging up space that could otherwise go to homegrown drama and Hollywood movies. They wanted to follow the lead of the BBC and ITV, which have moved serious current affairs into poor times and secondary stations. Their magazine news programmes instead treat tabloid love rats with the seriousness previously reserved for religious leaders. Their news programmes have been pushed later into the night, and may yet be pushed farther. The viewer doesn't like it when his James Bond movie is interrupted by Trevor McDonald.
Prime Time Investigates, however, reaffirms that expertly reported fact can still better fiction in the ratings. It will continue doing so because the hidden camera has opened up a new era in Irish television reporting.
There is no shortage of potential targets: construction sites; creches; school buses; schools and hospitals. There are a lot of people who will now dread the night they turn on the television and see their staff in inglorious washed-out colour.
It guarantees that Prime Time will stay at prime time.
