Radio Review: Another grim anniversary in the annals of Irish journalism fast approaches. It will be two years next week since Charlie Bird finally jetted into New York, the week after the Twin Towers fell, to proclaim with feeling and repeatedly over the national airwaves that a really dreadful event had occurred, many people had died, and firefighters had been quite heroic indeed, writes Harry Browne
Perhaps it was with a lurking September consciousness of his not-always-impeccable timing that Charlie came on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) to nominate his presence at a Rolling Stones gig in the Point the previous evening as the historic equivalent of being in the GPO in 1916. (Mind you, he didn't say what month in 1916.) In fact, Charlie boasted that he was on something of a history-making run: "I was in Croke Park . . . earlier this year for a match when Laois and Offaly played in the Leinster final." The Offaly men's clever disguise, the lilywhite strip of Kildare, may have fooled the other hacks, but it was never going to deceive a newshound like Charlie Bird.
Perhaps it was because Aoife Kavanagh teased him about being "of their generation", but Charlie's expertise about Mick, Keith and Co seemed to break down a bit, no match at all for his GAA nous. "Some of the music, for me, I hadn't heard it - some of the older songs." Well, sure, that's all right Charlie, they didn't really get Rolling until around the mid-1980s, did they? And the presence of obscure old ditties from before Charlie's time (Brown Sugar, Paint It Black, Honky Tonk Woman, etc) clearly didn't ruin the show, judging by Charlie's very rock 'n' roll repetition of the F word - "fantastic!" Morning Ireland's visit to Charlie's World may have been a wee bit misguided journalistically, but it was an entertaining reminder of the essential subjectivity of human consciousness, wasn't it?
For that reason it put me in mind of an event I had the pleasure of attending in Cork last weekend, the Community Radio Training Féile. (Oh, the blessed innocence, the heartfelt commitment, of people who can put "training" and "féile" in the same title.) In the hermetic world of that conference, it was perfectly obvious that community radio was doing vitally important work, giving voice to concerns that wouldn't otherwise get an airing, offering a democratic management model that could facilitate the wider remaking of broadcasting to serve the interests of communities rather than corporate shareholders.
Back outside the bubble, it's equally obvious that for most people, even the clued-in and right-on, community radio is invisible and might as well be inaudible - and that's even among those who know enough to distinguish it from local commercial radio. It serves 14 widely scattered "communities", including the student "communities of interest" in Cork, Limerick and Galway, but mainly more narrowly defined geographic realms, e.g. Youghal, north Inishowen, south-west Clare. It draws upon the energies of hugely committed volunteers, many quite young, as well as the rapidly disappearing resources of FÁS.
I have, and shared, some quibbles with the concept of community radio. What is a community anyway? Don't community stations, their boards heaving with local councillors and assorted do-gooders, run the risk of replicating the social, economic and political power structures of their localities? Moreover, even where they carefully dodge that bullet, isn't there a danger that they're an insignificant, underfunded sop to "media-democracy" rather than a force for real change? Nonetheless, and despite the worries of the commercial operators, we badly need a critical mass of local-scale radio; where the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland won't license it, we should go DIY. Jack Byrne, chairman of north-east Dublin's remarkable Near FM, told me about an urban micro-pirate in the US, which campaigned against drug-and-gun culture. When the authorities shut it down, its operator pointed out that the state was happy to see AK-47s sold and toted in the streets, but was worried about a small FM transmitter.
If there was any doubt in my mind about the need for radio revolution, it was dispelled en route to Cork by the car-radio sound of lefty-activist-turned-free-market-demagogue Joe Duffy. This particular Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) saw Joe lose the run of himself, roaring at Wicklow Green councillor Deirdre de Burca over her (actually quite tepid) support for planning rules that restrict certain new developments in part of the county to purchase by Wicklow residents and workers. It's blatantly anti-Dubliner, sez Joe; so himself and TD Gay Mitchell - think of them as "Dub and Dubber" - laid into the amazingly forbearing de Burca, with Duffy effectively ignoring relevant information about the rules so he could keep the abuse coming. Compared to that dose of Joe, Charlie Bird is sweet reason itself.