RADIO REVIEW:VOICES WITHOUT images can feel painfully intimate. It's virtually impossible not to interact with the voices on radio that swirl around your kitchen or fill up your car when you're stuck in traffic, writes Quentin Fottrell.
Television is an influential and powerful force, but the relationship with radio is far more personal. This medium is like an invisible foster child that often needs to be treated with respect and care.
Time for some perspective on our national concerns. Susan Cahill reported from Uganda in Can I Forgive My Husband? (Newstalk, Sunday), a chilling and illuminating documentary about HIV/Aids in Uganda and part of the station's Different Voices series. It opens with the voice of a Ugandan woman: "It's like an accident. That's what I believe. No matter what you do, if you're meant to get it you will."
Her words suggest more than just a fatalism or belief in the will of God. It was the resignation and helplessness of someone who was failed not by their God but, in the early years at least, by their government. There are over one million Ugandans with HIV/Aids, a figure not reduced since the peak of infections in 1994. Millions more have died since the first documented case there in 1982.
The next voice was equally jolting. "We definitely need to move beyond blame," said Lori Michau from women's advocacy group Raising Voices, adding, "Clearly men are bringing this in to many women." She illustrated the precarious balance between this recrimination/blame and understanding/problem solving - in a culture where an estimated 60 per cent of women have suffered physical or sexual violence.
Malayah Harper, the UN AIDS Country Director for Uganda, estimates that up to 50 per cent of new infections are within marriage. "The previous ABC, abstinence, fidelity and condoms, works if you're in a position to negotiate sex and you have enough education and information . . . If you look at issues of sexual violence or even women in marriage they are not in the position to negotiate condom use."
In Rakai, south of Kampala, over 40 per cent of the population has HIV/Aids. Charles Mutyaba has been HIV positive for 24 years. His wife Gertrude and eight children are negative. Gertrude is strong, silent and proud. Charles is passionate and lively, his voice careering into a high-pitched, excitable screech when he says the word "condom".
Marriage is no protection in Uganda, but Charles may represent a new glimmer of hope: "People believed it was due to witchcraft. I was advised by the people in the area to wash away the curse from me. I said if it was a curse, then let me hope it was washed away from me. But if it was a virus let me tell my only wife that I will never continue with any fornication outside of my marriage."
Back in our own backyard, Liveline (Radio One, weekdays) with Joe Duffy is being flagged on rté.ie with Joe's bearded teddy bear image, but Damien O'Reilly is doing nicely as a fill-in while his nibs is away. He has a bit of the young fogey about him and occasionally comes across as too hectoring and judgmental. That said, if Joe is feeling insecure, he should have Jenny Huston filling in again in the future.
A debate started on Monday on the back of Floyd Phelan's death by euthanasia on Fair City. Of course, producers and writers pick these issues to cause a flash fire of debate in the slow summer haze, which is then fuelled by Liveline. In the corporate world, they call that co-branding. Fair City and Liveline producers could do worse than to consult each other on developing future contentious issues.
The gardaí are reportedly investigating claims by "Jane", who helped her terminally ill father die. She shared her story of her own free will, but considering the emotions it must have stirred in her, and the fact that euthanasia is a crime in this country, it's a pity the producers so readily put her on the air. RTÉ did not comment on the issue, but is expected to honour its commitment of anonymity.
Jane's voice was a cry in the dark. "He wasn't going to get better," she told Damien O'Reilly. "I was told by the doctors treating him that he was dying slowly, but surely. He was wasting away, he couldn't eat . . . He was on a drip. I got the needle. I inserted it into a tube on the drip, which went into his hand. He took a little breath and he was gone. His pain was over. His suffering was over." Damien was all over the subject later in the week: he said that people were "abhorred" and "outraged" that it was even being discussed, which may be exactly why they decided to discuss it. "You're speaking there somewhat matter-of-factly about it," he told an Irish man in Holland who was explaining why euthanasia is legal there. Clearly, if a caller isn't outraged on Liveline, even that rare voice of calm is used to incite it.
Liveline can helpfully politicise issues, as it does with the public health service, but hard-nosed producers/researchers need to be more careful about putting vulnerable people on live radio. There is a big difference between being a helpful consumer advocate and a divisive devil's advocate, between stirring up a fierce war of words and providing a genuine public service to listeners.
Liveline too often does both.