john this has changed a bit and it is to make sense of this huge torrent of facts that become available to audiences and yes i suppose the enormous is of those facts and the interpretation of those facts involve certain opinions but that was always the case because for instance in the choice of stories that we thought were important that reflected our perspective our etiologies conduct was always a factor and that remains a factor you just mentioned the torrent of facts but how do you really really know that we are indeed talking about facts because all those social media that you just mentioned you know sometimes there are people who are not necessarily professional journalists who are putting the information out there on twitter on facebook on you tube. and those people are often seeking to influence somebody else's opinion on the subject so it seems that this drop of the reporting when you actually go somewhere in the field and when you're trying. and on what the facts are nobody is

really doing that stuff anymore yes i agree in part with you but i don't first of all the internet has changed our access to sites that we have a mass of really factual resource in the invented cells so that's quite different to what it was twenty thirty forty years ago that's one factor secondly although social media is. the the treasurer and facebook and all that if you were to rely on those factual basis. and without checking it would be very misleading but nonetheless that's the social media can direct you in in various ways to where major stories are occurring so that it is easy for anonymous is a factual basis but as. an indicator of important things happening that sound legal or over outreach you think is ations have because arguably you know your

name your visibility is something that is very important in the media that's why people ultimately trust you and if again we have made sharing media figures like yourself dedicating your time and your life your efforts your passion. opinionated programs more than again that. job of just reporting that some would argue that it's not having much of an impact well first of all you . greatly exaggerated my role in our journalism and i'm not saying that how to different localities as ireland and say has a fight but but secondly. the focus that we have on the program that i do on now on the johnson right now to do is is an equality focus and look at things from the perspective of equality and look at things and ask questions from that perspective identify stories that are important from that perspective all those who. i don't

have that perspective and have another perspective identify different stories and have different interpretations interfere now since but this isn't something new this was always the case and we were we were insufficiently aware of how subjective news reporting must all along and perhaps being more aware of it now it is a good thing i could point quite matters does a you know relatively minor incident involving a celebrity matter or draws something in africa for instance in the democratic republic of congo and huge war five million people killed there in in the war between one thousand nine hundred eight and two thousand and one for hardly got any media attention around the world at all so not that much has changed and that the subjectivity that you have of dental fide was always present but at the same time as far as i know from your own biography again you made an important contribution

not only to the print media also to the investigative journalism and i want to mention that historically the term fourth estate refers to the print media and it is the print media that print is the most consequential pieces of reporting that we know the watergate some of the pentagon papers and so on isn't it the case that it is broadcasting and television that is ultimately driving the quality of journalism down i don't just take you up on the great print media exclusives reported. and you mentioned watergate and at the same kinds of corrugated happened president nixon along with henry kissinger secretary of state. were secretly bombing cambodia and they murdered certainly three hundred thousand people that got almost no attention at all by people who were focused on was a cage on the break in a democratic party headquarters and lies being told by now which was the more important story. by far more important story was whopper's happy income and yet

hardly anybody. bothered about that story at the time and people now remember watergate as a high point in print journalism has and i think that it was a low point in print journalism in that it distract attention away from a hugely important issue and it was by comparison with a trivial issue but it's still less significant very profound political change and it happened because of the reporters if you look at the recent revelations of the government's wrongdoing i mean i'm talking about disclosures by bradley manning or at what snowden you know they didn't require annie journalistic participation toll so isn't the case that we journalists the century have given up on that very important function that you mentioned earlier of keeping the governments in check it is people of other professions who are now are doing that you say given up as if we did it at any stage that we know what the big issue is i'm just giving you an

example but come portier we nor. there was a lot of good reporting in america on the vietnam war and certainly did important fact but it was television actually dutch. that most influenced american public opinion on vietnam or it was in print journalism though there were some stunning printer on this involved in reporting on the war so things aren't just care quite as you you are presenting them well let me bring up an example from again your own biography i think you reported quiet substantially on the iranian and that . very profound scandal in your country when the government was tapping your phones the government later on so i would suggest that at that time many journalists still considered themselves the watchdogs of the government but nowadays it looks like we are more like the dogs who keep barking while the caravan keeps moving and i think your own country is a very prime example of that big. as you keep criticizing the government you say

that you keep it in chad but the policies of successive governments don't seem to be changing if that's true because we have a very thin democracy that's what's called parliamentary democracy is very it's very shallow democracy. and really does no sense in which people are self-governing there's no sense in which people are sovereign and it is almost is a college as a. as into entire law most to make the point that it is the people in a sovereign state that should be taking major decisions and yet are alienated from politics because they don't have any role there no no no central italy. so nothing changes because politics is too large extent about which crowd which group hold the office at the same time and they do exactly the same as was the case previously and they're also infected with exactly the same ideology as the other crowd so that nothing important changes and going back to this perspective equality

there's no sense like for instance we have gone through as a serious financial crisis in this country in the last five years but we still remain one of the richest countries in the world and we. we could have and gone through that crisis with far less pain had we distributed the pain but also had we distributed the world a good deal better than we do instead we have a afflicted people who are already disadvantaged in really cruel ways in many instances and although to some extent the richer. segment of society has taken some of the pardon they still are largely and troubled by what has happened done by the adjustments that have been made and i know that again you've been very vocal on all those points throughout the crisis bread for some reason many of your points fell on deaf ears don't you think that one of the reasons for that may be that.

this proliferation of critical opinion in a something that allows petitions and the public to not pay attention to what journalists like yourself are saying quite taken by a marxist floss for. graham ski and he had the idea that really rule the world was mindsets was he the ology and in order to change change you needed to change mindsets he called it hate community and thought that that could be dealt with only through what he called the contract money and to a large extent we are we are irrelevant we are just. the wind. but if we see ourselves as part of an ongoing counter head against the prevailing ideology of near liberalism then over time if enough people do it things will change and i don't think there's any prospect of that happening of any imminent

change it will be a generation you say it's going to change but is it going to change for better or for the worse because again if we take up your personal example of the government tapping your phones and you know you're seeing them later on thirty years later the governments you know some governments cannot afford to do that not only you know against some prominent journalist but also against some hands of state and they don't have anything to fear i mean i'm sure you're aware of the recent n.s.a. scandal isn't that ultimately reflective of how disproportionate those roles of the media and the government have become we are no longer the watchdogs at all. but where we have the watchdogs and we've always operated within the confines of the prevailing hate really and. and we have very little influence we we in too far as we have any influence you told me change or only tends at the very at

the margin. and but with regard to the profound issues like for instance the equal distribution of drugs and power and respect to new and and educational that we have almost no effect at all. and incidentally my telephone miles tops one hundred seventy five to nine hundred eighty three eight years and i i was allowed to see the final the surviving transcripts of those conversations and only two of them had any connection at all with the irate the rest they were issued for the more of the other eighty two had entirely to do with really trivial matters largely political and i remember thinking at the time had discovered all this that if they were tapping my phone for this alternate in consequential information they must have been tapping thousands of telephones here in ireland and it's not believed that they one could have preceded edward snowden by thirty years when i was unable to find out he was in the privileged position he was able to tell the

world the scale of the abuse of of modern technology by the american government and i think he's to be congratulated as i think russia is to be congratulated for giving him sanctuary well but it's only temporary so and beside that we don't know the extent of their russian surveillance program at this point and we we don't but i suspect that the russians would do doing their best in that regard i suspect that american take america is taken largely ahead of them and in that but maybe i'm mistaken well mr brown we have to take a short break now but when we come back critics usually have last responsibilities and those who are being criticized when some brown seem to have a very clear vision of how things are supposed to be by why doesn't he try to implement that himself that's coming up in a few moments on worlds apart. oh

god is woman. is protects. rights extremist. thinks. the boss has to be aggressive makes us straight. to go.

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welcome back to worlds apart would be a discussing arlin's many countries told journalist friends and brown mr brown it's difficult to find another country where the top two public personalities have a such long history of public disagreement i think you're a few to be the country's prime minister and the county goes back decades when you first criticized him for his performance as as a member of parliament and i know that later on the you tried to make inroads into politics yourself do you think you would have made a batter politician first of all my it is true that i criticised him at the beginning his political career. but i've forgotten what he said and i suspect he'd forgotten about it well he didn't actually ever interviewed him earlier and he said

that. he made a point that you are trying to enter politics and were unsuccessful so obviously he stuck. by his mistake and that is well i i was invited by is his party leader at the time john bruton to contest the european elections in one thousand nine hundred four and i gave it about an hour's consideration decided i would not i subsequently when there seemed to be general election imminent but again asked by the leader of of his party john bruton it's time to consider standing for the property i gave the consideration after i decided not to for. two main reasons one is i felt that i would i disagreed on every important issue with the party and it would be foolish of me to go ahead is just a standard bearer for the party but secondly i thought that my personality and by focus was really outside of my personality would be suited politics and my focus anyway was in journalism i did want to remain there but i don't see there being

that sharp distinction between journalism and politics i think that all citizens. our should be involved in politics and certainly journalists are involved in politics now and in the party political sense but in the sense of doing debating analyzing political issues and commenting on them you know as i said i had a chance to interview him early in the morning and he was actually very complimentary if your are in assessing your contribution to this country i just want to hear that bridge is an institutional country and we respect your greatly for his opinions or for times so he calls you an institution in this country and i know that you know when he started expressing critical opinion of his political performance he once and made an offer it's spanned one week and his constituency to see what the life of a public official entails and he says that that offer is still on the table if. i

take him up on. a spending week for them ok well i'm. television coverage well yes well do you think that could create some i don't know some synergy that would be able to break this for out of the. irish politics because it seems that. you're politicized seem to go round the circles in implementing various policies and again they are continuing on your path of criticizing that doesn't seem to change minds do you think that could lead to any significant change if you put your passions together you know they. come from different perspectives and that's it i think you're making too much of a discreet. i don't matter a damn and the disagreement is trivial it is of no consequence but for there is consequence is a disagreement. etiology really. see

himself nonideological he would seem to have not bored by etiology but everybody is and we all have. really strong perspective. on life and it. gives you an example like for many a lot of people thought slavery was ok and some with the some of the most respected people of of history like the people who founded the central america. jesus a lot of this part slavery was ok but over time things change it people look back maybe in the hunt two hundred four hundred two thousand years time and wonder how did people put up with such vast inequalities between an elite at the top hugely powerful who had nice and lavishly wealthy and control the lives of so many others and others who were really nothing miserable and.

powerless belittled lives now you mention me being or rather me overestimating the extent of your disagreements with their prime minister but i think you're all also underestimating the. your performance on camera i think here your criticism can be quite ferocious and you know there are a lot of commentators who are sad that the appearing on the show and may make a break career and what i would like to ask is. whether or not you have a somewhat privileged position here because obviously criticizing is much easier and being a subject of criticism and this state of affairs in your country is so precarious these days that you don't really need to think twice to come up with critical points while being you know a public official even the prime minister is probably the hardest job in the world these days i mean. who would want to be the prime minister of ireland this time

around because it's it's pretty hard to about two hundred people who want to be prime minister of really i mean it's not that well i mean why would they would. as is gerald joy power there enjoyed be perceived the perks of the office and all that and no i disagree with you i don't i don't think that is the the the really the reason that there is friction between. people like me and people who who. come for interview is because our culture is such that numbers of political party feel they have got to defend everything the political party does particularly when it's in office and even though they themselves would be would share the criticism that there is they get into difficulties you know unsurprisingly and it's the culture of obesity and to to the party leadership that is the problem and it is a very serious problem because it means that our parliamentary democracy and even

the even in our parliament drugs that which was said earlier was a friend forward marcus it doesn't work doesn't it the theory is that governments are responsible to parliament that is not true because governments controlled parliament so there is no accountability and that is one of the major features of our major defects of our political system but i mean what's the point of doing that anyway because regardless of which political party is in power the the policy is still simply the same don't you feel like your job is essentially a waste of time a waste of your own precious an agenda that doesn't seem to move the policy one way or another doesn't but i think there's a function in drawing attention to the fact that we discover meant promise before he got into office that there would be a profound change in the politics and the way we run things and approach and they lead people to believe that we change in policy and that there would be change for

instance with the cards placed and insisted that we pardon sharing on the bank that that europe would bear some of the burden but it came into office and not. change the tallest is though the former government to just stay down and i think that it's fair to to challenge members of the government term members of government parties on that how com you made these promises and nothing changed by that challenge people i think become more sensitized to the hypocrisy of politics of our politics to the. the unaccountability of our politics to the pointlessness of a lot of it and i think that's useful because only when people become fully aware of that pointlessness and i'm great about it will there be change but at the same time for example if we look at the track record of the current prime minister. it's true that what he said that he made a lot of promises on the campaign trail but when he came to power one of the first

things that he did was to. give public finances to the banks to prevent them from going bankrupt and to keep them solvent so even after that he is ratings his popularity ratings continue to increase and so. isn't it ultimately true that people get the leaders that they deserve to create the people the policies they deserve are the political system they deserve but people are caught in the constitution traps people in our present political mode and it's very difficult to get out of it the only way i would see harvard would be if there was a provision in our constitution paired by say one hundred thousand electors could demand a change in the constitution or demand a person particular law go to referendum and that might change things and people would feel empowered that they could directly change change things but one of the

depressing feature is that after can't happen because the government of the day can't control straight any initiative such as that that would deep into iraq. so you're so it's not that people dissolve the politicians they get they're trapped in a political system that doesn't work i know that one of the shows that you did not so long ago was on the news that despite oldest era to measures members of parliament approved additional funding for p.r. purposes and you were very critical of the fact that it would expand money on spin rather than some other very pressing needs but my question to you is whether the thing journalism is still entitled to the privileged position that it claimed for us itself a couple of decades ago i mean i don't know what you mean by criticised funding of p.r. spin but. our journalists do journalists have privileged position yes they do. to

a large extent people don't have a voice and journalists do have a voice and therefore they have a privileged position and i think there is an obligation on those of us who do have a voice to use that force to express the interests to defend the interests of the voiceless and there may be an arkansas national who to my to think that i can you understand that this power could also be abused for political purposes do you think the journal is the watch dogs should be a wash themselves oh absolutely and journalists themselves should be held to account and media institutions should be held to account and there's reason to be apprehensive about the can the concentration of media ownership but also about the fact that the media here and i think in russia is controlled by a very powerful and very wealthy elite and inevitably the media is going to reflect the interests that wealthy elites and again that's something that we should be drawing attention to mr brown thank you very much for your time and if you like the

show please join us again same place same time here on the walls of. right to see. first strike. and i think that you're. on our reporters. in. the in the. wealthy british style it's time to.

time. markets why not scandals. find out what's really happening to the global economy in these kinds of reports. terrorists are simply a bad groups of people located throughout the world no different than say a motorcycle gang or what have you that are involved in bad activities you're not going to solve that problem by invading countries overthrowing governments and occupying countries that's the solution that's insane you're going to win it with good police work and intelligence gathering that's how you'll defeat terrorism they are just simply little pockets of bad people throughout the world you have to deal with creating an empire or an occupying nations with your military is not the answer.

yet is one thing. but i still come to understand it and i don't want to good mood but i have this one question with doing this all for you have you had everything they respect and that you give them all no they would disown it to go your way but would sure. it was a latent form he tried to restrain himself but look it will burst out anyway. it's really puts me off that i have such a father. it was one small but very great secret that i have to live with the.

breaking news here on our to be a triumph of diplomacy a deal between six world powers and iran over its nuclear program is reached effectively putting an end to a decade long standoff correspondents bring us reactions from across the globe but it on the. enrichment program will continue this verse does say that iran has a right to enrich but what exactly did the sides agree on and we take a look at what the new deal holds. and warns against celebrating the agreement saying to iran is the only a winner and a deal and that a nuclear arms race could fall.