Editorial - On Talking of Troubles

Abstract

We had not anticipated it, but this second number of The Radio Journal has turned out to be our first ‘themed’ edition. Four of the refereeapproved articles we were processing in Spring 2003 seemed to fit together naturally, so here they are. What they have in common is an interest in what happens to radio organizations, their production processes, and long-established, medium-specific ways of speaking, when speech radio finds itself having to deal with politically and/or personally troubling material. Collectively, through their examination of evolving practices of radio speech and speech production, they remind the rest of us that our subject will evade our grasp, if we do not keep a close watch on how and why it does what it does. Paul Moore’s article on the Legacy broadcasts on BBC Radio Ulster in 1999 suggests their unique format has bequeathed its own production legacy to that part of the corporation, an acknowledgement that notions of ‘consensus’ or ‘balance’ may have outlived their usefulness. He calls this forward-looking possibility of a more subject-focused approach, in which individuals are supported in gathering their own materials and presenting their own narratives on air, as ‘fourth-phase public service broadcasting’ in Northern Ireland. Hugh Chignell’s study of how BBC Radio 4’s Analysis programme dealt with Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s - like Moore’s article, an extended version of a paper presented originally at the second international Radiocracy conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 - shows a similar process of formal evolution in current-affairs radio, if at a greater historical remove and operating at a more typically institutional, stately pace. The differences of style between Ian McIntyre and Mary Goldring may seem minor set alongside the general absence of the voices of the victims of apartheid from their reports, but you will hear a difference none the less, as you read Chignell’s excerpted transcriptions from the archive. And coming after Moore’s article, Chignell’s case study serves as an example of the institutional norms of a past era of current-affairs radio, which have perhaps required challenges like Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ in order to change. Anne Dunn’s analysis of narrative techniques in current radio news bulletins in Australia explains why this evolution in news radio style may well be appropriate for the medium, yet is problematic for the values of the news genre: narrative characteristics - as deployed in headlines, packages, and wraps - seem to make convenient meaning, but may be merely manufacturing ‘pseudo or spurious narratives’. She implies, however, there is no way back to older, stiffer forms (the inverted pyramid), and news broadcasters must simply wrestle every day with the beast they have created. Karen Atkinson and Shaun Moores’ modification of politeness theory to explore the function of a particular kind of broadcast discourse - ‘troubles-talk’, as exemplified by Anna Raeburn’s now-defunct Live and Direct confessional phone-in on the subsequently reformatted national British station Talk Radio - shows that what in certain circumstances would be threatening can be understood here as an act of solidarity. The very final paragraph in this number looks forward to our next. In his review of Vincent McInerney’s Writing for Radio, Martin Shingler confesses some of the difficulties he finds as a lecturer in persuading students that radio is still ‘relevant and exciting’. Our annual review of the teaching of radio studies in Volume 1: 3 will seek to present reports on an international range of examples of innovation in this area. Also in that concluding number of our first volume, as well as more book reviews, will be articles on the changing organizational constraints on creativity in BBC Radio drama production, the unusual status of ‘third sector’ or free radio stations in Spain, and a detailed report on the proceedings of ‘The Radio Conference - A Transnational Forum’, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in July 2003. This hugely stimulating, major conference fully lived up to its billing, embodying in its programme and atmosphere what Enrico Menduni of the University of Siena in his thanks to the organisers has already suggested as the way forward for our field: ‘transnational cooperation, interdisciplinary exchange, international projects, and the establishment of a triangular relationship between academics, professionals and students’. With just some of its themes of interest being: history, national and community uses, radio and the Internet, audiences, radio advertising, and music radio, we look forward to exploring several of these topics in Volume 2 – whether in articles based on papers presented in Madison, or sent unsolicited by you, direct to us here. They are all welcome.