On News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) former Haiti hostage Gena Heraty spoke of her ordeal, and more strikingly showed her forgiving attitude towards her captors. She feels sad for them even though they had her petrified her, and prays for them regularly. Haiti is still a country in turmoil she said, but life there it is intense and you couldn’t dwell too much on the past. She is back working with disabled and abandoned children in a new location and in her immediate area things are relatively quiet. She found it especially hard to return, having spent time in Ireland after her release. She could see at first hand the worry of her loved ones at home and was so grateful for all the support and prayers she got during her ordeal. Asked it was wise to go back again, she felt she couldn’t abandon those children. As for the danger, she said it was ironic – generally you were told it was not safe to out on the streets but she had been kidnapped from her own house. She wasn’t a specific target, and felt that lots of activities were dangerous in life, like going out in your car.
Sadly, this was illustrated in one of the stories that dominated the media last week – the shooting of a woman, Renee Nicole Good, by immigration officers in Minneapolis. Remarkably, people’s reactions varied according to their polarised politics, rather than to any dispassionate assessment of the evidence. The video evidence was played over and over. At one stage BBC News played the full version of the event, while in one bulletin Sky News stopped short of the actual shots being fired. Either way it was violent, horrible, and shocking. In a less gun-soaked environment, the woman would have driven away and been questioned later about her driving behaviour in the encounter with the ICE agents. Cooler heads would have prevailed. Yet every news programme showed public figures rushing to judgement – with President Trump and later VP JD Vance taking the polar opposite view to Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey. The latter’s anger was palpable and his intemperate language, bleeped out in some reports but not all. To me, the video evidence was disturbing but inconclusive, justifying at least an investigation before a conclusion.
Between this, Venezuela, and the protests in Iran (I thought the coverage of the latter took quite a while to catch up with events) it has seemed like such an unstable world, with Ukraine and Gaza slipping down the news priority rankings. On the Brendan O’Connor Show (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday) the host characterised it as ‘Everybody fighting with everybody’, but it’s never that bad in reality. News editors have such soft power when it comes to deciding what gets prominent coverage. They can hype things up or dampen things down, depending on their own agendas and ideologies. One would hope for journalistic objectivity and professionalism in news reporting, but I fear we’re rapidly losing that ideal. In the UK media over the weekend one of the controversies has been about homicide rates dropping in London while certain narratives hype up the fear of crime. I remember years ago journalist Vincent Browne making that same point about crime in Dublin.
Over on Time Radio Breakfast (Tuesday) there was an interesting discussion on our attitudes towards death. Presenter Stig Abel declared that death was the end of it all, with no acknowledgement that millions believe in some form of continuation in an afterlife. I don’t expect him to believe but could at least have noted that so many others do. It’s not a media bubble exactly as I’ve heard many presenters and guests speaking about their religious belief and churchgoing.
Among the programmes creating some calm was the return of Sunday Morning Live (BBC One), also featuring the return of presenter Holly Hamilton after maternity leave – she brought her new baby with her! Presenters and guests were open to a more religious approach to death. Among the other topics were the pros and cons of cultural Christianity, drink driving laws, whether citizenship was a right or a privilege, the drink driving laws and the ‘M’s suggested for the new year – meditation and mindfulness.
They might have added a ‘P’ for prayer.
