PRESENT TENSE:SO THIS is what it's like to be the subject of disaster-zone coverage. This is what it's like to be at the centre of the story in which we are notionally the lead actors, writers, producers, directors and animal wranglers but in which we have become mere extras.
We may be a nation of storytellers. We may have written the story. But the international media is scripting this one. It’s horribly compelling.
You could hardly walk up Grafton Street this week without seeing at least one camera crew. The TV vans were parked on Merrion Square, reporters engaging in the hourly choreography of live reports.
The foreign media had to introduce its readers or viewers to the story each time it told it, so a shorthand of the crisis developed. But this has a beautiful story arc. Simple. Accessible. Neat. Forget the mind-freezing financial complexity, they could say. All you need to know is this: Ireland was poor and then it was rich. Here is a view down the Liffey. But it turned out not be rich at all. Here is a panning shot of a bank. Now it is poor again. Here is a shot of a beggar on the street. Now here are some updates on just how screwed Ireland is, accompanied by a soundbite from Brian Cowen and a shot of someone on a megaphone.
At home we Irish could spot people we know: there's Richard Boyd Barrett on the megaphone; Vincent Browne at a press conference. Like you're watching the Winning Streakaudience.
It is always odd to see your country presented to you down another’s lens. Much of it has been fair, and there has been some deeper analysis, even if the news reporters’ blogs have allowed them a freedom their TV reports have not. But it has been simplified, and there have been moments when the demands of drama became apparent.
When a woman made a protest behind someone being interviewed on Sky News, the channel did not cut away out of respect to the interviewee; it let it play out. And this week the BBC led a news bulletin with news that protesters had stormed the Dáil. We knew it was a small group. The BBC made it look like 28 Days Later.
It has been a long time since this island attracted anything near this level of coverage. The Troubles brought many Irish bureaux, especially from the British papers, but the peace process’s dividends included the withdrawal of the 4th journalistic division of the UK press. When they came over here this week it was obvious they had lost their bearings somewhat.
On Monday the world’s financial journalists, who had been relatively sure-footed in their understanding of the Irish crisis, suddenly had to turn into politicians. They knew nothing about the subtleties and quirks of our maddening political landscape. You could hear the hesitancy in their voices, the fear.
“Ireland is in political turmoil,” they said. “Please do not ask me any follow-up questions on this topic. I only read a bit about it on the plane on the way over.”
The disconnection from watching an Irish crisis through foreign media is supplemented by the Anglicisation of our political language. The Irish premier. MPs. The Irish parliament. And there has been the creep of dormant stereotypes. The horses on the streets, the religious iconography. There was a Newsnightreport that was accused of lacking a soundbite from a gap-toothed man with a pig under his arm.
But let’s face it: we’re a nation of stereotypes. More accurately, we’re a nation that has struggled to know quite how to live with some of them. Depending on the context, we play up to them or get annoyed by them.
We have struggled at times to find a happy collaboration between selling gleaming new Ireland diddly old Ireland. Even as we claim not to warrant the stereotypes, something comes along that doesn’t simply reinforce it but nails it into the global consciousness.
We don’t like to be stereotyped as drunken oafs; then we indulge in Arthur’s Day, a marketing triumph so successful it fills not just pubs but AEs and jail cells.
We want to be seen as a nation of artistic genius; then we give Crystal Swing a bottle of whiskey and put them on US television.
We wanted to offer a rags-to-riches story; now we return to the default stereotype.
We wrote this story. The international press has relayed it. We’ll now be soap actors, typecast by the media, unable to escape our most famous role. The world will think of Chileans as plucky survivors, Greece as a burning basketcase, Ireland as a black hole of debt.
And unlike other disasters we won’t even get to the bit of the news report where we are told, “But even in the middle of this disaster there is hope.”
It’s not that kind of story.
