Something is happening to the Irish media, so quickly that it is not being observed. Or maybe it is not being observed because the media now provide the overwhelmingly dominant means of seeing and hearing at a public level.
When I was growing up, a journalist was something to be. I wanted to write with the grace and humour of John D. Sheridan, the power and chutzpah of John Healy, the humanity of Con Houlihan, the crusading truth of John Pilger, the elegance of Keith Waterhouse. If I were young enough to want to be anything now, I would not want to be a journalist. Once the stuff of which dreams were made, this has become a disgraceful profession, practised by thugs and voyeurs, and nowhere is it worse than it is in Ireland.
The potential for damage is greater than damage to some abstraction like "press values", extending to the society, of which journalism is now the chief enabler of public conversation.
One of the most nauseating sensations of everyday life now is to find oneself on a train or bus, sitting opposite someone who is "reading" a tabloid newspaper. Aside from the prying ugly nature of much of what passes for content in these newspapers, the experience of inadvertently glimpsing the unrelenting banality of the references to "Giggsy", "Gazza", "Kev", "Mad Hod" and so forth, is enough to turn the unguarded stomach. This is the language of the barrack square, the mock-macho familiarity which conceals a great fear. The "ethic" is: if I do not beat my perceived enemies into silence and submission, they will do it to me.
Everywhere now, these values have begun to seep into the crevices of Irish public life. Even on RTE Radio One, the flagship national service, once a refuge of reasonably conscientious discussion and debate, these values are on display virtually every day of the week.
As of yet, there is an understandable reluctance to admit that they have been surrendered to, which is why they are administered with the ultimate tabloid implement, the bogus sanctimoniousness about how far "some" are now prepared to go in the breach of established human behaviour. Thus, a presenter will read a whole ream from one of the day's tabloids, follow this with a mock-disgusted outburst at the perfidiousness of the gutter press, and top it with yet another paragraph from the same source.
It all comes down to money: talk is cheap. This kind of radio costs little or nothing except the salary of the star presenter. All of the programmes from Marian Finucane to Live line deal with the same pool of material.
All are essentially engaged in exploring the entrails of Irish life, using the pain, grief and unhappiness of real people as their material. Issues of world importance are discussed alongside and in the same manner as issues of mind-numbing banality or sacred privacy; housewives and travelling salesmen phone in to provide instant psychoanalysis of the actions and motives of people whom they have neither met nor spoken to.
The worst aspects of British tabloidism are being combined with pub-counter personal animosity in a cocktail of ugliness to make Rupert Murdoch go as red as one of his own mastheads with embarrassment. Every day, wounds are walked upon, weaknesses exploited and scores settled, and those responsible become the highest paid, highest-profile people in Ireland.
This raises a worry in addition to the standard anxiety about increasing scrutiny of politicians resulting in a lesser quality of public representative. This is indeed of serious concern, and, it will be observed, is a growing worldwide phenomenon.
In a recent New York Times article, a former US presidential candidate, Gary Hart, wrote about what he called "the paradox of public leadership and private fallibility". He was thinking of Bill Clinton and the recent unsuccessful attempt to dislodge him from the presidency because of his sexual behaviour.
This is a subject about which Gary Hart might be expected to know something, and I believe his observations are interesting and relevant. He identified a number of elements of the Clinton affair which have contributed to the "devouring" of public leadership: a "1960-inspired battle over the bounds of public morality", the "co-option of the political parties by cultural forces" and "the expansion of press `scrutiny' into public officials' private lives".
These, combined with the frailty, error and sinfulness of human beings, have ensured that, in future, political leaders will be worse rather than better than those who went before.
Senator Hart was returning to one of the key themes of his book The Patriot, in which he rewrote Machiavelli's The Prince for the modern moment. One chapter centred on the media and the associated cult of celebrity, now stretching from soap and sports stars to politicians.
"Celebrity is ephemeral and shallow," he wrote, "its Faustian bargain trades dignity for fleeting fame. Celebrity does not abide. It reflects no genuine value - neither that of legitimate fame for great deeds nor the infamy of great misdeeds. Forces that seek to reduce the serious leader to a celebrity are conspiring in the ultimate destruction of the leader and of politics itself.
"The task of communicating with the electorate while escaping celebrity's distractions is increasingly problematic . . . since the same media are the arena for both. This is the great danger of losing the distinction between the media as entertainer and as informer. The new leader must cut with one edge of this sword without being cut by the other."
Focus on private morality, Senator Hart wrote in his recent New York Times arti cle, now comes at the expense of focus on public morality. "Simply put, sex is salacious; it is more intriguing, more tractable, more commercially rewarding that attention to hungry children, homeless youth, inadequate medical care for the elderly, global warming and other such symptoms of morally warped social priorities." But even worse, he argued, is the rejection of public service by talented people who "refuse, out of self-respect" to put themselves through the ordeal of having their lives dissected in public.
Added to the corrupting influence of campaign fund-raising and the absence of civility in the public forum, "evisceration of private lives is too much to ask people of stature and dignity to accept". Does not this principle now apply in spades to the issue of the quality of people henceforth to be attracted into the Irish media? In other words, is it not likely that the next generation of journalists will be influenced by Gerry Ryan rather than John Pilger? It is a sobering thought.
Character, as Gary Hart says, is demonstrated over a lifetime, "and nowhere more tellingly than in a public official's willingness to put principle over career, even if that principle is to say `It's none of your business.' " To this I would add that character in a journalist is best demonstrated by the ability to say "It's none of my business." Chance would be a fine thing.