Has Anybody Seen This Man?

When Charlie Bird flew the RTÉ home nest last year, he was heading to report on an America with its first black president and its economy in freefall. With Obama the biggest story in town, why have Bird sightings been so rare, asks Justine McCarthy

Charlie Bird

"It is unlikely that RTÉ will close its Washington bureau. Who would cover the St Patrick's Day shamrock ritual in the White House? " Justine McCarthy

• 1
• 2

There is a story doing the rounds that an Irishman went for a haircut in downtown Washington DC last January. "Where are you from?" enquired the barber. The Irishman told him, adding that he was a journalist in town to cover the inauguration of Barack Obama. "Gee," said the barber, "we had your top journalist in here the other day. Said he was the most famous journalist in Ireland."

Maybe it is an apocryphal story. Even so, it provides an apt answer to the ever increasing cry, "Where on earth has Charlie Bird gone?" Can't you see him, lost in the anonymity of the administrative capital of the world's superpower, unrecognised in the crowd? In the precincts of RTÉ, the rare sightings on television of the newsroom's highest-paid staffer are discussed as animatedly as letter writers to The Irish Times record the first hoots of the owl every spring.

While Robert Shortt, his predecessor as US correspondent, settled back into business reporting for the station last week, worry about Charlie Bird was not abating. His colleagues fear he is not adjusting well to the transition from being a big fish in the small pond of Ireland's fourth estate to being a mere minnow in Washington. The concern is genuinely felt for a man universally liked by those who know him. The morning after George Lee declared himself a by-election candidate in Dublin South, he found a voice message of congratulations on his mobile phone, left by Bird from the other side of the Atlantic. The pair broke the National Irish Bank offshore accounts story together, endured Beverley Flynn's failed libel action, and wrote a book in collaboration. The contrast in their present fortunes is stark.

This should be a golden opportunity for the man nick-named Charlie "Brown" Bird when he was growing up in Sandymount, Dublin. One of the world's most exhilarating political stories is unfolding in Washington as the fledgling days of Obama's presidency coincide with the unravelling of the US economy. The new president is any journalist's dream package; quotable, visible, mobile, unorthodox and willing to be seen to make mistakes. You would expect that Ireland's state broadcaster would have an insatiable appetite for Obama stories, especially as his policy to lure US multinationals back home will have dire consequences for the Irish economy. Yet, Charlie Bird, recipient of an honorary doctorate and famous for the uncontained excitement of his reporting style, has been keeping a low profile on the airwaves.

His tenure as RTÉ's fourth US correspondent started well on 15 January when he appeared live on the Nine News to report on the ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 in New York's Hudson River at 8.30pm Irish time. As he spoke, however, his eyes kept wandering to a tv set beside him, as if following the news on an American tv channel and relaying it to the audience at home. In the circumstances, there was nothing wrong with that but it betokened a handicap in his new job that nobody had foreseen. Not only would he no longer be the centre of the story, more often than not he wouldn't even get near the story's centre while covering a country as vast as the US. Though he has made it as far as Cuba since his New Year move to the US, there were no reports from Mexico in the early days of the Swine Flu scare and last week's Prime Time programme on two Irish priests jailed in Florida for embezzling their parish was presented by Aoife Kavanagh.

Another impediment not of his making is the avalanche of daily news on the domestic agenda in Ireland. The maelstrom of political and fiscal stories on the home front makes it difficult to secure a place on the Six One News for anything outside the immediate agenda. Yet, the stories Bird has recently filed for the prime TV news programme have been relatively marginal. While Obama has been rescuing the US car industry, facing up to the banks, devising stimulus packages for the US and shutting down the Guantanamo detention camp, RTÉ's correspondent has been otherwise engaged. Last weekend, he filed a report about Netherland, the only fictional book Obama has read since becoming president, written by Irish barrister Joseph O'Neill. The same weekend, the Washington story getting saturation coverage everywhere else was the president's witty speech at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in which he lampooned himself and his cabinet.

A couple of weeks before that, Bird sent home a newsworthy report about lengthening food queues in New York in which, bizarrely, he congratulated a destitute woman for seeking out a free book and hugged her on camera.

As RTÉ imposes swingeing cuts on salaries and expenses (even car hire is being tried as a cheaper alternative to mileage allowances) to save €68m, the future of the station's foreign outposts is in the balance. Margaret Ward, who set up RTÉ's first bureau in China before last year's Olympics in Bejing, is expected to be recalled and the office there closed as part of the cutbacks. In response to a Freedom of Information query last May, RTÉ put the total cost of its foreign news unit at €3.191m in 2007. That included the foreign desk in Dublin as well as the postings in Washington, London, Bejing and Brussels.

In light of Ireland's relationship with the US, it is unlikely that RTÉ will close its Washington bureau. Who would cover the St Patrick's Day shamrock ritual in the White House? But there is concern about the level of Bird's output since his arrival. His fans, however, can look forward to the airing of a special documentary next Christmas. Crossing the Line Films, which previously followed Bird up the Amazon, the Ganges and the Arctic, has been commissioned by RTÉ to make a film about the €180,000-a-year Bird's odyssey in Washington.