MAKING THE NEWS

Walter Love talks to radio and television journalist, mark carruthers.


Where did your interest in politics come from?

“I suppose I’ve always been interested in politics. I studied politics for A-level when I was at Coleraine Inst and I was always interested in Irish history. So I ended up studying politics at Queen’s. I suppose that whole current affairs thing was something I was always aware of. It was always there and I suppose too that my family was always aware of what was happening in the world and that it rubbed off. I was certainly aware of what was happening in Northern Ireland when I was growing up.

“When I started studying the subject then I became much more aware of British politics and I was particularly interested in American politics as well. That curiosity has always stayed with me and I’m very fortunate that I earn a living from something that I probably would have as a hobby anyway.”

At any point at school had you ever considered anything else as
a career?

“I really did want to be an actor. I was very enthusiastic and successful up to a point. I did a lot of drama at the Riverside Theatre in Coleraine and at school. My dad did a lot of directing as well so I’ve been involved in his shows. I really did want to do that but I suppose I was advised by my careers teachers and my father that I should probably get a proper job. But I also quite fancied the idea of becoming a barrister and that didn’t quite happen. So I suppose I kind of fell in this direction and it seemed a very obvious thing to do.

“My primary degree was in politics at Queen’s and then I decided that I did want to go into journalism and I stayed on to do a Masters in Irish Politics for two years and really when I was finishing that off in my second year I started to do some work with the BBC. I had been very much involved in the Politics Society at Queens’ and we would bring in guest speakers, which gave me the chance to chair discussions and debates and I suppose that I started to do free gratis what I’m now doing professionally. So it just evolved over the years. I suppose I was quite persistent and determined. I was keen to do it but you have to be lucky as well.”
You’ve covered quite a lot of the output of the BBC here in both radio and television. What have been the key areas to date?

“People always ask me if I prefer radio or television. There is no answer to that question because I feel really at home on the radio. I love radio, I love the depth of radio and the fact that it’s quite a small team and as a presenter you’re a very big part in that team. I quite like that and I also like the fact that in radio you can speak to anybody straight away, instantly. If something happens in America you can phone them and you’re speaking about the incident. It’s much more difficult to do that in television. But television I’m very lucky with as well because I get to do Newsline, of course, Let’s Talk which is one of those big programmes that’s enjoyable to do, and, as we speak, this week when Paisley announced his resignation, it fell with Spotlight’s time.

“I got an e mail at six o’clock when I was sitting on air for Evening Extra telling me that we were doing a Spotlight programme on that story and asking if I was OK for that. So bang went my tea with the kids and I had to stay on to do that. But again you wouldn’t want to be off on a day like that.”

It’s a very fast moving
business, isn’t it?

“It is. There are quiet days but on a busy day it’s fantastic. On that occasion we took the decision to extend Evening Extra while we were on air and we did that with a huge effort, but seamlessly. It’s fast moving. It’s a test and I suppose I like the challenge. I don’t so much enjoy the days where everything is pre-prepared and you know what’s coming. It’s in the diary and it’s planned with everything perfectly scripted, the interviews prepared. I really think I thrive on the seat of the pants stuff where there is no running order and there are no scripts. In fact last Tuesday there was no guest. There was an empty chair. I think that’s great, that’s a real challenge. And if you come through that you have a tremendous sense of satisfaction.”

Is it, in a sense, a bit like being in theatre where you need to have a good supply of adrenalin?
“Yes it kicks in. I think that’s exactly what has happened. I am able to fulfil all of the things I wanted out of being an actor in doing what I’m doing. Maybe with a little bit more as well and without having to learn the lines as well because that was the thing I was always uncomfortable about. It is a performance and particularly when you’re in a television studio because of the cameras and the lights. There is that element of the spectacle with television particularly with a programme like Let’s Talk.”

What for you is the importance of a programme like Let’s Talk?

“Well I think it’s important because it’s the only programme in Northern Ireland where members of the public get an opportunity to hold their elected representatives to account. There are lots of other ways in which we can question MLAs and there are lots of other programmes where members of the public can give their opinions. But Let’s Talk is the only programme where, on a regular basis, we would have at least two members of the Executive facing members of the public directly, asking their questions, giving their opinions and sharing in the debate. I think that’s very important and very healthy for a democracy.

“It’s important for those politicians to be questioned by professional broadcasters, but it’s also important that voters get a chance to have their say and sometimes that can be quite revealing. Sometimes people say what you don’t expect them to say and where perhaps a politician might duck a question from me, it’s much more difficult to duck a question from a voter. There are certainly incidents where I can recall politicians who have been under an awful lot of pressure finding it hard to deal with an eighteen year old A-level student who just keeps asking the same question over and over again, or keeps coming back. Because they can’t lose their temper with them as they would with another politician, or get smart alecky as they would with me. They have to treat that voter with respect. So it can be quite an interesting exercise.”

We don’t have a hugely close contact with the audience on Evening Extra because it’s one of those very fast paced drive time programmes where there’s not a lot of interaction through phone-ins, but people do text Evening Extra. On Newsline we do have a viewers panel and we would certainly make an effort to go out as we did to Ballymena for the Paisley story, to hear what people there thought about Ian Paisley’s decision to resign. I think it’s very important that access to the media isn’t controlled entirely by the media and by those of us who are professionals. We have to facilitate as broad a debate as possible. I suppose it’s about a balance. I think that the BBC is very fortunate because of its range in that it can allow people to do that. Our on-line services too have a role. If you look at the Let’s Talk website, people are encouraged after the programme to begin a debate. It’s fascinating a couple of days after the programme to go in and see people on the message board talking to each other about what some politicians have said. I wouldn’t want to over play the importance of what we do, but it’s nonetheless valuable.”

Everything’s changing very fast in broadcasting, isn’t it? Is it easy to keep up with the changes in technology?

“I’m a bit of a technophobe to be absolutely honest. I still struggle with the remote at home. I started here something like 19 years ago when it was the typewriter and the multi-copy yellow paper. You’ll remember the auto-cue when it was bits of paper stuck together with cellotape. We’ve come an awfully long way from that and certainly we have to be very computer literate, but some of the younger members of staff coming in now are incredibly good at the new technology. We’ve now become digitalised in editing for radio and very soon we’ll be editing digitally on our desktops in Newsline as well. That’s a remarkable change. I couldn’t tell you in all honesty that I’m up to speed on some of those things but increasingly journalists and reporters have to cut their own stories and they have to be able to edit sound and pictures.”

There’s another side to you, away from hard news, and that’s in the arts world. You’ve written on the subject and you are actively involved in the running of the Lyric Theatre. Tell me something about that side of things.

“I edited a book on the arts called Stepping Stones with one of my colleagues here at the BBC. It looked at the arts right across the board between 1971 and 2001 and then I edited another publication of essays after Belfast failed to be short-listed for the Capital of Culture bid a few years ago.”

What are your views on the
Belfast bid?

“It didn’t have a chance. It was too soon, and that’s not to say for a moment that it wasn’t right to have big ideas and that the people involved didn’t do their very best. Jeremy Isaacs chaired the panel and he said afterwards in his feedback that the cultural infrastructure simply wasn’t in place. And he’s right. We were kidding ourselves I think that the cultural infrastructure could be in place for 2008. The interesting thing about that is that it started a debate and our publication Re-imagining Belfast also kicked into that debate. I think that the cultural infrastructure is changing and that’s part of my passion at the moment with the Lyric. We’ve got to get our buildings in place and we have to get the companies in place. And we’ve got to fund them properly. I think government has now realised that. Not enough money is in the arts but more money is definitely being put into the arts.”

If you didn’t become an actor professionally, you did have your interest in theatre. Is the Lyric a good example of that?

“Really at the moment it is not overstating the case to say that I am double jobbing. One as a broadcaster and the other as chairman of the board of the Lyric. And that is virtually a full time job which I do in my spare time. But it takes up a lot of time and we’ve just moved out of Ridgeway street and we’re setting the day for the Minister to come along with the wrecking ball to knock it down. That will happen in May.

“I received my formal letters from the Arts Council yesterday confirming the amount of money we are going to get, nine and a quarter million pounds, please sign on the dotted line. And a further two million from the Lottery. That money has all been very hard earned and it’s taken a huge effort to persuade government that this was a project that could happen. But not just government, the wider community as well – trusts, foundations, philanthropists and high net worth individuals as they are called, successful members of the business community who in some cases have pledged huge sums of money to help that to happen.”

How do you feel about the Lyric’s part in the history of the city from it’s small beginnings thanks to Mary O’Malley?

“She was a remarkable woman. I never met her but I know her sons and they still take a keen interest in the Lyric. She was a visionary who had an idea of what she wanted to do and nobody was going to stop her from doing it. She operated a hugely successful theatre company from her own house and the she was instrumental in getting the new Lyric built on the Ridgeway street site which opened in 1969. The difficulty is that that building is now obsolete. It’s not fit for purpose and what we’ve got to do is share her vision, and what we will have in 2010 is a theatre that will be a proper iconic landmark building twice the size of the old Lyric and the facilities will be state-of-the-art. It will be spectacular and we’ve got the best architects, the best construction company building it.”

In terms of your cultural interests, what about your involvement with Romania?

“Romania is a country which has gone through huge change and I found myself travelling to Romania with an odd group of individuals shortly after the revolution at Christmas 1989. In January 1990 I travelled there with a group of individuals from Northern Ireland which included Jennifer Johnston the novelist, some people from art galleries and I went out to make a documentary. I travelled with a friend of mine, John Fairleigh, who was then a lecturer at Queen’s and John was very friendly with a Romanian actor called Ion Caramitru who was the kind of Olivier of Romania with superstar status. When we arrived at the airport we discovered than Ion had been made Vice-President. Suddenly he arrived with his Presidential entourage and said: ‘I forgot to mention that I am the Vice President actually!’

“So we had the most remarkable week of our lives and Romania had just got rid of Ceausescu. The writers, the actors, the poets had been part of that process. We were watching during the day Caramitru appearing in the Assembly discussing and debating the future of the country and then at night time we were going to his flat for dinner. On one occasion we went into Bucharest because the miners from the north came in because they were concerned that the old guard were going to fight back. The centre of Bucharest was overwhelmed with thousands and thousands of black-faced miners with their pit helmets and the lamps on. It was like the parting of the Red Sea as Caramitru walked through the sea of miners and they were so reverential in their dealings with him. He was trying to persuade them that the revolution had happened, that it was safe and that the country was goping to have a better future. It was spine-tingling stuff to be there in the middle of this. Out of that came the Ireland Romania Cultural Foundation which I was involved with for some time.

“The links between Ireland and Romania culturally are very very strong. Seamus Heaney has worked quite closely with the poets in Romania translating their work, and they have translated his. There is an awful lot of work between the universities as well. It’s all quite quiet low grade stuff but very important. Theatre companies from Northern Ireland and Dublin have travelled out to perform their work at various festivals.”