Radio reviews: Is woke the new normal?

Counting ballots after the family and care referendums. Photo: RollingNews.ie

Declan Lynch

On Newstalk Breakfast (Newstalk, weekdays, 7am), Ciara Kelly and Shane Coleman were riffing about a drift to the right in Irish politics. I like this riffing, it brings an energy to proceedings, and I’m aghast at those who say a presenter expressing an opinion is not proper journalism. On the contrary, knowing where somebody stands on the great issues can bring more clarity to proceedings than the “objective” style, which has inbuilt and unacknowledged biases of its own.

It also makes Newstalk ­Breakfast sound more like a creature of the modern world than its august rival on RTÉ, Morning Ireland – you could say RTÉ is doing a journalistic version of the Tridentine Mass there, up against the immediacy of the vernacular.