Radio Review: 'From what I gather it's good to have the likes of Iraq on your CV," said Paul Johnson, a coach in a boxing club in a Loyalist area of Belfast. Over the past year he's seen a noticeable drop-off in attendance at the club - a favourite with ex-RUC men and one-time soldiers - because his clientele are in strong demand by recruiters looking for private security contractors in Iraq.
"Word spread very quickly around here that there's a quick buck to be made," he told reporter Jenny Cuffe in File on 4 (BBC R4, Tuesday), adding that the daily rate of between €300 and €500 was simply too good for many men to turn down.
In the first in a new series, Cuffe looked into the role that mercenaries are playing in the post-war conflict. It's a massive private industry with an estimated annual turnover of $1 billion, yet the "hidden army" of contractors, mercenaries, security personnel, call them what you will, employed by everyone from the British Foreign Office to private companies, aren't under any official body's control.
"Tony" from Northern Ireland (none of the security men wanted to be named) said arming yourself is easy - a whole arsenal can be bought easily in the markets in Baghdad. The line between acting as security men and as soldiers is often crossed, Cuffe discovered, and the recent revelation that ex-paramilitaries from Northern Ireland and former members of the South African Security Services under apartheid are working in Iraq as security contractors is increasing the spotlight on the role of these workers. The programme presented a horrifying picture of chaos and lawlessness, not helped by America and Britain's refusal to set up a legislative framework in which the security companies must operate.
While mercenaries were unwilling to be named in that fascinating programme for obvious reasons, the way some RTÉ documentary producers deal with the naming of contributors is beyond comprehension. Listeners often hear several opinions in a half-hour programme, but are never told who is actually giving them. The only clue is a list of contributors at the end of the programme and it's up to the listener to try to match the person with the quote. A typical example of this disregard for the listener was in the last in the series on architecture in the State We Are In (RTÉ1, Monday). Presenter/producer Alf McCarthy strolled around the usual parts of Dublin with architect Brendan Kennedy, both chatting like boring tour guides while three male voices chipped in with their opinions. But who were they? If a listener managed to stay tuned until the end of this bland documentary, they turned out to be names culled straight from the page in the contact book marked "the blindingly obvious" - Irish Times environment correspondent Frank McDonald, Kevin B Nolan of the Dublin Civic Trust and Ian Lumley of An Taisce. The producer took the easy route in choosing contributors, but at least he could have introduced them properly.
To be fair, the same documentary department did produce the most interesting and well-made programme of the week in The Summer of the Moving Statues (RTÉ1, Wednesday). In the wet summer of 1985 thousands of people flocked to the tiny Cork village of Ballinspittle to see the statue of Our Lady move. Producer Sinéad Mooney set the scene superbly with newsroom clips from the time, and she captured the atmosphere of the event vividly through the voices of eyewitnesses. Such was the hysteria that in the same summer there were 47 other reports of moving statues around the country. Conor Cruise O'Brien visited Ballinspittle and, looking at the crowd, was surprised to see "how middle class it is" as evidenced by the number of cars around. And as it was the heyday of Gay Byrne's radio programme, Mooney included a clip of his mystified voice as he described the crowds gathered to see the statue move. They were the only cynical voices in a programme that concentrated on the testimonies of believers and, while their credulity was to be wondered at, there was no denying their faith.
The voice on Today FM's drivetime programme this week was the distinctive one of journalist Sam Smyth, and he's a more robust-sounding presenter that the bland-toned Matt Cooper. John O'Donoghue, Minister for Sports, "oh, tourism and all things fun", as Smyth called him, was on air Wednesday talking about the rising price of the pint, and he firmly resisted Smyth's many attempts to get him to talk about the root of the problem - lack of competitiveness. The Minister pulled off such a successful and maddening "it's nothing to do with me" attitude that an exasperated Smyth countered with "you sound a bit like a hen-pecked man." The Minister didn't respond to that either.
