Declan Lynch: ‘Pat Kenny is not just the oldest presenter of a major current affairs radio show, at present he is also the best’ | Irish Independent
Flor Lynch
Claire Byrne is leaving RTE. Photo: Photo: Andres Poveda
'The Pat Kenny Show' will move to the weekends. Photo: Steve Humphreys
David McCullagh will begin hosting 'Today'. Photo: RTÉ
Claire Byrne is leaving RTE. Photo: Photo: Andres Poveda
'The Pat Kenny Show' will move to the weekends. Photo: Steve Humphreys
Pat Kenny is not just the oldest presenter of a major current affairs radio show; at present he is also the best.
He has at various times in the past also been the best, but the important thing for our purposes is that he is the current holder of that supreme position.
That’s according to this column anyway, where I made this assertion a few months back, mainly in the light of Pat’s superior grasp of the biggest story of our time: the fact the US has been rapidly moving towards autocracy.
Indeed those were Pat’s exact words last Monday morning, introducing his items for the day. “The US rapidly moving towards autocracy” is the kind of clear, accurate and generally confident command of the situation which Pat continues to display, for three hours, five mornings a week on Newstalk.
Yet when it was announced he will be leaving this position and moving to weekends, this somewhat significant aspect of the situation was largely unmentioned.
David McCullagh will begin hosting 'Today'. Photo: RTÉ
Much of the commentary stuck to the inevitable changes that occur when a broadcaster reaches a great age – though Pat has not given the slightest sign that his powers are declining – and to the money involved and the “musical chairs” aspect of it, with Claire Byrne due to replace Pat, and David McCullagh replacing her on RTÉ’s Today show.
Actually, we’ve been hearing a lot about some major “shake-up” at RTÉ radio in general, and sure enough, they need some kind of a shake-up. But not the kind of shake-up that is achieved just by shifting presenters around or by bringing in a few new ones.
It’s more fundamental than that, more to do with this important point that Pat Kenny, one of the oldest men in the radio world, is correctly framing the great events of our time, while RTÉ, on the whole, is still a step behind him.
And no, it’s not really about some sense of freedom he might feel on Newstalk, it’s about the vast experience he has accumulated as a journalist, mainly with RTÉ itself – experience which has trained him to call things as they are, to change the framing of events when the events themselves demand it.
By contrast, RTÉ radio in these post-truth times can sound like the newsreader during the week solemnly intoning about “so-called dodgy boxes”. He’s not wrong, exactly, but there is such a sense of distance from the essential energy of the subject, it can sound like a bishop delivering the homily at a confirmation.
This Week came up with another prize exhibit recently, when interviewing Professor Bob Schmuhl about Donald Trump’s move to “re-district”, or, if you like, to gerrymander, the mid-term elections.
When it was put to Schmuhl that this move by Trump was “brazen”, even Schmuhl, who is deeply avuncular and measured, had to lift it a notch – “brazen is probably a quaint and careful term”.
Claire Byrne is leaving RTE. Photo: Photo: Andres Poveda
RTÉ in general is still at the “quaint and careful” stage, as if the game hadn’t changed utterly since the old “both-sidesing” days. Meanwhile, Pat has been ahead of them, freely referring to how Hitler dismantled German democracy in 53 days, and how Trump is clearly heading in that direction too.
He does not bother to “both-sides” it, to formally mention that Trump supporters might disagree with that analysis, because he has moved on from that kind of zombie journalism.
Moreover, while the “musical chairs” aspect, and the speculation about the vast salaries was entertaining, in truth this recent upheaval should not be about individuals but about a systemic issue – not about whether David McCullagh will be better than Claire Byrne, or whether she will be better than Pat Kenny, but about a whole way of broadcasting life.
It is long past the stage when RTÉ news and current affairs should have had a major re-appraisal of its traditions of “both-sidesing” journalism and how it has stopped working in the age of the post-truth leaders who just don’t observe the basic rules that have sustained that culture.
No more is the interviewer trying to catch the politician in a lie, it is now a much rarer thing to catch some of these characters in a moment of truth. Of course, RTÉ may already have had this major re-appraisal and reached the conclusion that everything was fine.
Meanwhile, the one broadcaster on national radio who has really met the moment is leaving the front line.