Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern stormed out of an interview on German TV last week. It was great television.
For two reasons.
First, storm-outs are funny. They just are. It’s the kind of stuff YouTube compilation videos are made of. It’s dramatic, it’s unexpected, it’s exciting.
Second, it’s because Tim Sebastian, host of Germany’s Conflict Zone, put Ireland’s former head of government on the spot and started to grill him over his finances — which were the subject of the six-year long Mahon Tribunal.
This morning on his Radio One show, Ryan Tubridy used his pulpit to stand up on behalf of the former Fianna Fáil leader, explaining the situation like this: “They were there, ostensibly, to talk about the Good Friday Agreement, and then the interview went somewhere else entirely. He’s within his rights, actually, to do that.”
But it turns out that Tubridy wasn’t so much defending Bertie Ahern as he was… attacking the very concept of interviews.
“I think Bertie Ahern is probably within his rights on that one. If they said to him, ‘We’re going to go here, here and here’ that’s fine, but if they said ‘We’re just going here,’ well then that’s not so cool. And that’s probably why he said ‘You know what, if I agreed to do that class of interview then I’d do that class of interview but that’s not the class of interview I agreed to do.”
“That’s the way it has been ever since the sands of time. That’s how they roll.”
Listening to this, I suddenly felt like a sad, bearded, beer-bellied Alabamian man in his late-30s who just found out that the professional wrestling isn’t real.
But I had the presence of mind to check myself. I’ve seen interviews where the guest is challenged forcefully and manages to stay in their seat and fight back. I’ve seen interviewers ask tough questions only to be masterfully stonewalled or proved wrong by a fierce interlocutor. I know that interviews are real. Does Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy know that interviews can be real? Does he think that all interviews have to be scripted?
Worse again, does he think that would be a good thing?
And even if he believes this, why would he admit it? Have some dignity. Or at least don’t tell us that that your line of questioning might be dependent on what your guest will allow.
For what earthly reason should Tim Sebastian, host of a show that’s literally called Conflict Zone, pull his punches when interviewing Bertie Ahern? It’s called Conflict Zone, not The Tim Sebastian Pat On The Back Variety Hour.
Isn’t it possible that the German public might have some unfinished business with Ahern — given that it was their money which ended up bailing Ireland out after the banks and housing market he oversaw landed us in a recession? Isn’t it fair that the German public might be concerned that such a man refuses to rule out a future presidential bid? Forget the specifics, isn’t it appropriate that a man who stood at the head of an EU government for 11 years is asked whatever question a serious journalist damn well pleases?
Doesn’t the Irish public deserve to see Bertie challenged, for that matter? We should be sending Tim Sebastian our sincerest regards. It’s been a long time since an Irish broadcaster made Bertie sweat like this. I guess now we know why.
Before he was cut off, Sebastian was making a perfectly valid point. Partial architect of the Good Friday Agreement though he may be, Bertie Ahern still served as Taoiseach in a period that proved pivotal in precipitating Ireland’s economic crash. Politicians whose CVs boast major successes as well as catastrophic controversies don’t get to take a televised victory lap for the rest of their lives. You know that, Ryan. Right?
Sebastian performed his journalistic service dutifully. If Bertie Ahern is a man who can’t talk about the findings of the Mahon Tribunal unprompted without ripping off his lapel mic and storming out of a room, then the public deserves to know that. They deserve to see that. They have the right to wonder why.
A first on #dwZone: The former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern called a halt to our interview after Tim Sebastian raised the financial scandal that led to Ahern's resignation as PM.
Full interview 👉 https://t.co/QH9ePeiBdE pic.twitter.com/hpg4cOf1Cg
— DW Conflict Zone (@dw_conflictzone) April 20, 2018
And at the end of the day, Sebastian did clarify that Ahern was by no means sitting on Germany’s equivalent of The Late Late Show.
“Conflict Zone is a difficult programme for politicians, it isn’t meant, after all, to be easy,” he said after the interview had fallen apart. “We had no intention of offending him – this was billed as an interview about the Good Friday Agreement, but we did also offer his office a list of topics that we were going to cover but they didn’t come back to us.”
Hosting The Late Late Show is obviously not an easy job.
To do it, Tubridy must spin plates and juggle knives all at once. From segment to segment, Tubridy can be interviewing charity campaigners who are struggling with health difficulties, GAA players, CEOs, civilians with tragic pasts or Tony bloody Blair. Tubridy has to switch gears so often that there’s never really a chance for him to settle into a steady pace.
That’s certainly forgivable, and the fundamental assumption is that, though he navigates a rocky road, he is one of our most talented interviewers.
That’s what makes Monday morning’s admission so downright disturbing. By showing his disapproval for an interviewer asking tough questions of a public figure (a former Taoiseach, no less), Tubs revealed an unsettling lack of respect for the importance that media interviews actually play in holding the powerful to account — whomever or wherever they may be.
It also told us something very worrying about Tubridy’s attitude towards his own role in society.
Consider some of the important guests who Tubridy has quizzed in the past year: Conor McGregor after using the word “faggot”, Ibrahim Halawa after his release from an Egyptian prison, Donald Trump’s former Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Sinn Féin’s first new leader in decades in Mary Lou McDonald, Hillary goddamn Clinton.
Any time there’s a blockbuster guest to be interviewed, Tubridy will be the man asking the questions. No questions asked.
And consider some of the guests who could end up sat opposite Tubs of a Friday night. Pro-Repeal campaigners, anti-Repeal campaigners, Garda figures involved in controversy, Leo Varadkar, Mícheál Martin, government ministers. Important people who need to be asked important questions that, if it were left up to them, they might not fancy answering.
So it can’t be left up to them. That’s what the media is there for, Ryan.
Now, whenever we see Tubridy interviewing somebody, are we to assume that the guest has drawn the lines and Tubridy thinks his job is not to cross them?
More succinctly, would Ryan Tubridy skip all the tough questions he’s got for Bertie Ahern if Bertie asked him to? If so, then we’ve got a serious problem.
Thinking that an interviewer is rude, or has said something uncalled for, is a perfectly valid view to hold. Where that validity begins to erode is when Ireland’s number one interviewer, who is paid huge money by the state broadcaster using licence-payer cash, says that, generally speaking, the outcome of an interview should be predetermined before both parties sit down and that nobody can blame an interviewee for walking out. That’s unacceptable.
Not every interview has to be Frost/Nixon. Nobody’s expecting Tubs to pin Danny Healy-Rae to the mat and make him admit that he doesn’t have any evidence to support the claim that God controls the weather. Nobody wants every episode of The Late Late Show to end in a bitter walk-off.
But there needs to be a very strong sense of trust that a heavy-hitter like Ryan Tubridy puts several greater concerns above the concerns of his guests. The truth is the first one that springs to mind. Public interest is another. If Ryan Tubridy believes that sticking to a plan agreed by all parties takes precedence over those things, then he urgently needs to sort out his priorities.
Ordinary people rarely get a chance to question the powerful. That means that when the media gets the chance, they have to seize it with both hands. Gloves off, Ryan.
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