The film, entitled 'Selling Crime', concerned the treatment by the media and politicians of the crime problem. Prime Time asked me to do it on the basis of a number of columns I had written on the subject.

And so I discovered that, even apart from the trivial aspect, television is a brutal medium.

Everything is distilled down. Theses, ideas, sentences, clauses, all are squeezed to fit the pernickety requirements of the small screen.

The skill required is considerable, and in the case of 'Selling Crime', credit for it must go to an excellent producer, Tanya Sillem. If you saw the piece, you will form your own judgement. If you didn't, the rest of your life is likely to be an empty vessel.

The subject matter itself is deadly serious. The thrust of 'Selling Crime' was that the prevalence and threat of crime is pumped up by the media and politicians for their own ends. In the case of the media, the motivation is commercial gain. Crime sells, and, to a certain extent, is treated like entertainment in the media. One result of this is the spreading of fear among the most vulnerable in society.

Then politicians latch on to the notion. They, in turn, pump it up further, to give the impression that they alone have what it takes to beat crime, punish criminals and make the world safe.

Public policy is thus dictated, driven by tougher legislation, more resources and louder rhetoric. Meanwhile, all this noise has little effect on the actual levels of crime because it fails to address the problem in a coherent manner.

For instance, surveys in this country show that we feel we are the most crime-ridden state in western Europe. In fact, we're one of the safest countries. The upsurge in gun crime in recent years has definitely heightened fears. One of the principal reasons for this sudden upsurge has been Ireland's rapid development into a wealthy nation. All loss of life is appalling, but despite our fears - fuelled by the media - the level of organised crime in this country still lags far behind other western European states.

What last week's programme demonstrated to me was that there is a reluctance in many media quarters to even contemplate that there may be some distortion of crime afoot.

The panel discussion on Prime Time consisted of a criminologist, two other journalists and sumo's finest. While the criminologist largely agreed with my arguments in the film, the two journalists felt I was the one pumping up a baseless theory.

For a business which likes to take and hold the high moral ground, we in the media are not the greatest exponents of self-analysis.

Rehashing the arguments from the safety of the printed page would be unfair, but suffice to say that selling crime is a phenomenon that has been around since long before the current so-called crisis.

If I had harboured any notion that using the powerful medium of television might effect the slightest reevaluation from within, it was quickly dispelled. After the programme, one of the panellists received a text message from a journalist. You might think that any reflections on our business would elicit from within its ranks an erudite reply. You would be right. The text of the text was as follows: "That c*** Clifford never broke a story in his life."

Ring them bells.