yes i suppose the analysis 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 aren't 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 try to ascertain what really happened on what the facts are and nobody is really doing that stuff anymore yes i agree in part with you but first of all the internet has changed our access to sites that we have

a massive reserve factual resource in the invented selves so that's quite different to what it was twenty thirty forty years ago that's one factor secondly all those social media. the the treasure 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 is the carriage reliance is a factual basis but as. an indicator of important things happen that sound legal or over outreach things are going 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 is. again we have. 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 first for you. greatly exaggerated my role in irish journalism and i'm not saying that how to different model a desert island and say it has a fight but secondly. the focus that we have on the progress i do on now on the drones and the right way to do is is an equality of 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 or those who don't have that perspective and have another perspective identify different stories and have different interpretations interviews now since but this isn't something

new this was always the case and we were we were we were insufficiently aware of how subjective news reporting was all along and perhaps being more aware of it now it is a good thing i can point out what 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 huge war five million people killed there and in the war between ninety ninety eight and two thousand and four 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 me. 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 exclusive report you just. mentioned watergate at the same terms of corrugated happened president nixon along with henry kissinger secretary of state. were secretly bombing cambodia and they murdered it 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 what was happening in cambodia 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 distracted attention away from a hugely important issue and it was by comparison with a trivial issue but it's still that 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 an e.a. journalistic participation toll so isn't it the case that we journalists this 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 doing that you say given up implies if we did it at any stage that we know where the big issue is i'm just giving you an example but come portier we nor that there was a lot of good reporting in america on the vietnam war and certainly did have important facts but it was told. actually dutch. that most influence american public opinion

on the vietnam war it wasn't print journalism though there were some outstanding print journalists 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 because you keep criticising the government you say that you keep it in chad but the policy itself 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. is it almost is regarded as a. infant toddler almost to make the point that it is the people who solve a niche they do to begin the major decisions and yet they're alienated from politics because they don't have any role there are no no no central italy in and 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 and the other crowd so that nothing important changes and going back to this perspective and quality there's no sense like for instance we have gone through with the 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 gone through the 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 ready 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 on top of 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 but for some reason many of your points fall 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 part really rules the world was mindsets was he the ology and in order to change change you needed to change mindsets he call it hey community and i thought that that could be dealt with only through what he called contract money and to a large extent we are we are irrelevant we are just. howling at the wind. but if we see ourselves as part of an ongoing counter had to many against the prevailing idiology of neo 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 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 in or against some prominent journalist but also against them has a 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 their watchdogs and we've always operated within the confines of the prevailing hate money and diet. and we have very little influence we we in too far as we have any influence at all will change or only tends at the very at the margins and but with regard to the profound issues like for instance the equal distribution of wealth and power in respect to news and health and educational that

we have or almost no effect at all. and incidentally my telephone model starts nine hundred seventy five to ninety three years and i was allowed to see the fine the surviving transcripts of those conversations and only two of them had any connection at all with the irate the rest there is a fourth 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 really 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 i think you can actually forgive him thanks

very well but it's only temporary and beside that they don't know the extent of their russian surveillance program at this point and we don't but i suspect the russians doing their best in that regard i suspect that american take american is taken out to be ahead of them and. 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 then those who are being criticized when some brown seem to have a very clear vision of how things are supposed to be but why doesn't he try to implement that himself that's coming up in a few moments on the well part of. the let me just tell you something right now president george w.

bush never claimed the right to extradition really assassinate american citizens this president barack obama should be impeached for crimes against the citizens against the constitution because he has killed women and children a drone strikes so i just like to say that i think that history is not going to judge the presidency of barack obama and george bush in the same light whatsoever i think obama is way worse than bush and i am not a big fan of george w. bush ok and you could probably be co-hosting this program i guess i don't need to see you very much definitely give you reflective of what we've heard from give me and for a monster there there is no compare and contrast between either president whatsoever this side's having a spending problem this president currently has spends and pulling the debt and deficits out of control more than all presidents combined however george w. bush did spend too much but his governing style foreign policy prowess taking a set of crisis and leadership style or night and day over what president obama's are. wealthy british style

it's a. little. market . what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines. as a report on our. welcome back to worlds apart where via discussing our lens many countries told journalists france and brown mr brown it's difficult to find another country where the.

public personalities have a such long history all public disagreement i think your feud with 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 your south 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'd forgotten about it and i suspect he'd forgotten about it all he did and every interview with him earlier today and he said that he made a point that you try to enter politics and were unsuccessful so obviously he remembers but he's mistaken on that as well but i i was invited by his party leader at the time john bruton to. untasty 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 party 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 or second 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. are or should be involved in politics and certainly journalists are involved in politics not in in the party political sense but in the sense of i going to beijing

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 vincent is an institution in our country and we respect the greatly for his opinions at different 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 here to expand 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 for now i'll spend a week with them ok well i can bring television cameras along as 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. your petition 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 that. come from different perspectives and that's it i think you're making too much of. discreet and you can you know 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 you would see him self not bored by etiology but everybody is and we all have. with the 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 and out of all this part thought slavery was ok but over time things change it people look back maybe in a hundred two hundred four hundred thousand years time and wonder how did people put hope research 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 two 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 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 the state of affairs in your country is so precarious these things 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 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 a bt and two two 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 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 still seem to be 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 person but i think there's a function in drawing attention to the fact that we discover meant promise before we got into office that there would be a profound change in the politics and the way we run things and they led people to believe that we change in policy and that there would be change for instance with the cart and insisted that was part and sharing on the buying tide that europe would bear some of the burden but they came into office and not. change the tolerance is the former government to just stay down and i think that is fair to to

challenge members of the government term members of government parties on that how come 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 gree 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 appeal because 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 where by say one hundred thousand electors could demand a change in the constitution or demanded 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 that can't happen because the government of the day can't control straight any initiative such as that that would deepen debacle. 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's 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 you 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. funding of p.r. spin but. are journalists do journalists have a 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 for us to express the interests to defend the interests

of the voiceless and that may be in arkansas naturally who to my to think that i can you understand that this power could also be abused for political purposes do you think the journalist they 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 be 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.

when the crisis leaves us traces everywhere. empty clothes rooms become the norm. children pay for the mistakes of adults. by working in a tobacco field or in a cafe or. they are the ones who come back home blasts. so his games are just in their memories. choose your language. with. some. of the the consensus to. keep the opinions that invigorating to. choose the stories that impact the life choose access to your office.

on the final. day. and the rest. will be. a. thing that i still. want to. but i have this one question. for. everything. that.

it was. he tried to restrain himself. anyway. but i have such a father. to build a. mission to teach me.

a victory for diplomacy after a days of tense negotiations tehran and six world powers clinching a breakthrough nuclear deal bringing an end to a decade long standoff but divisions remain iranian. enrichment program will continue this first step does not say that iran has a right to enrich but mixed messages so what exactly did the sides agree on. being the war has started three eugenie it is going to be cooling for another six months experts warn that the deal's ragged language may see all sides interpret the details to suit themselves. in other news police in kiev use tear gas on a crowd protesters trying to storm the.