Public service broadcasting takes many forms on the radio, and this column wouldn't want to give even a momentary impression that it's only to be found where the TV-licence-holder is paying for it. Nope, while RT╔ carries a fair lump of that particular burden, commercial broadcasters also chip in with what you might call civic-minded programming, and it's not just with the death notices on local stations.
And if (like the deaths) such programming also happens to be a bit of a ratings grabber, so much the better.
Much of The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday) obviously falls into this category. In general, it's fair to say that the show does "public service" in ways that RT╔ hasn't quite found the nerve or the wit to do; and specifically, its emergence as a campaigning force is a welcome expansion of the traditional narrow Irish definition of what constitutes "responsible" currents affairs broadcasting.
I say that even though I'm not especially enamoured of the philosophy behind the populist campaign on which the programme cut its activist teeth - namely the Dunphy and Ross badgering of Eircom directors and Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke, on behalf of the luckless "investors" who so generously endowed the privatised Eircom with their risked capital.
This week saw the programme embrace another hard-luck cause: in the aftermath of the Sinnott judgement in the Supreme Court, The Last Word has promoted the campaign of pressure and protest spearheaded by people with disabilities and their families. And yes, it was disconcerting to hear temporary presenter Fintan O'Toole introducing an item on Fine Gael's support for recalling the Dβil with "we had some good news today" - a phrase RT╔ normally reserves for when Darren Clarke shoots a 65, or something equally pseudo-patriotic and uncontentious. And yes, it was a little weird to hear O'Toole asking the FG spokesman what "we" should do next in this effort. But "we" should get used to this sort of bias-on-our-sleeve broadcasting, both for its innate vitality and its potential contribution to public life.
Not all the listeners were ready to do that just yet. A sufficiently significant minority complained about the lack of impartiality on this issue to merit bringing Dunphy himself into the studio on Tuesday to put his imprimatur on the process. Yes, Eamon and Fintan agreed conversationally, impartiality is an important journalistic value, but so is sticking up for disempowered people who badly need such a media loudhailer to get their message across to an unfeeling system.
Now, both men already have a bit of a reputation for - how shall we put this? - their equestrian abilities on the tallest of beasts, across acres of moral plateau. So they both played it cool at first, trying to adopt a modest pose and even throwing in some journalistic self-loathing: O'Toole suggested that it was an alarming indication of just how sick the system has become that journalists ("God help us" was the implicit qualifier) were needed to help make it right.
But Dunphy couldn't contain himself. In terms that are rarely enough encountered by his listeners, if not by his readers, he launched himself at this "sick system", attacking the Supreme Court in terms that would only be matched by Navan Man himself, told us: "I don't like politicians," and put the programme's Sinnott campaign in the context of a virtual class war against an insulated and privileged elite. He cited the latest revelations from the Moriarty Tribunal as a further call to the barricades.
Well, I'll say a big "amen" to that, Brother Dunphy, and I'll try to avoid smart-arse comments about potential membership of said privileged elite. But it would be nice to hear if either himself or Brother O'Toole has a name for that sick system; because, in the absence of any further guidance on the question, listeners could be forgiven for thinking that its name is "Ireland" - or, in the pub vernacular, "this fucking country".
Sure, there's nothing wrong with a bit of honest and hard-earned contempt for the institutions of one's own state, but a listenership that was kept more consistently informed about events beyond these shores might just have a broader picture. We might be no less angry, of course, but we'd know the anger should be directed not at some post-colonial flaw in our national character but at a globalised kleptocracy.
The image of partying G8 leaders in Genoa could help us to sketch in the picture. There's Bush, the dynastic dumb-ass who grabbed an election with the help of his brother and a contemptible court, and who blatantly governs on behalf of his industrial sponsors; Berlusconi, who has momentarily stepped away from the revolving door that takes the Italian political elite in and out of their courts; and Blair, foisting further privatisation of public services on an unwilling populace.
And that's just the Bs. In France, Chirac looks set to follow the likes of Kohl and Haughey down an ignominious path, led by too-little-too-late investigators, while Russia, Japan and even Canada have similar stories to tell, and some far worse. Most of these countries have not merely their Sinnott-type judgements and Moriarty-type scandals, but Flood and Lindsay equivalents to boot.
Meanwhile, these states and the institutions they control lecture (equally corrupt) Third World governments about how to organise their economies so that profits keep going West.
Why, for people who don't get to vent anger on their radio programmes (or in their newspaper columns), it must be enough to make you want to break a shop window.
Anyone who is still worried about the dangers of Dunphy becoming a demagogue probably hasn't heard Rush Limbaugh.
And anyone who reckons Dunphy, with the help of his lucrative Weakest Link gig, is now sufficiently overpaid to afford the elite's membership dues probably hasn't heard about Limbaugh's new contract. Worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars over the next eight years, it makes the US talk-radio presenter "one of the highest-paid people in the world in any field of endeavour", according to Up All Night (BBC Radio 5 Live, daily).
The irony, according to the US radio expert (from InsideRadio.com) who spoke on Radio 5 Live, is that, with Bill Clinton out of the White House, and having played his part in seeing off the threat of Al Gore, Limbaugh has lost his edge. Limbaugh probably wouldn't agree, but surely there is some frisson lost when the "liberals" being bashed aren't occupying the White House but are protesting on the streets of Genoa.
We also heard that there's anecdotal evidence, at least, that the decline of talk radio in the US is probably terminal: a younger generation - or at least the demographically desirable listeners among a younger generation - gets news, current-affairs coverage and opinions that are customised via the Internet.
So, we have some good news today: Limbaugh's enormous salary has less to do with his continuing importance on the US scene than with the ongoing manoeuvres among the handful of giant conglomerates that control US radio, anxious to use the leverage of a proven attraction such as Limbaugh to lure stations into perhaps dubious syndication arrangements, and ponying up for less desirable shows in order to get Limbaugh.
Sorry, did I say good news? Maybe we can come up with another name for it.
hbrowne@irish-times.ie