A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Journalists, for the most part, will never win awards for their sartorial elegance; the traditional image is less of a person in a well-fitted bespoke suit and more a bloke with the racing pages stuffed into a bulging pocket of a jacket that wouldn’t look out of place buried in a hedge.

The exception has traditionally been television where a suit and tie or a dry-cleaned top would be the norm, unless you’re in a war zone where a helmet and flak jacket with PRESS on the front of it are the outfits of choice.

It’s not that we’re badly dressed as a profession, but it’s more the geography teacher image – clean jeans and a work shirt or jumper – than the cocktail party look. And because we don’t have to appear on a small screen before the nation, that’s just grand.

But you don’t see newsreaders in jeans and a tee-shirt – although some apparently might have shorts on out of camera shot – and television reporters on the road could usually make the switch from their day job to a wine bar without going home for a change of clothes.

This dress code doesn’t just apply to journalism of course; the Dáil used to strictly enforce the shirt and tie rule for male politicians until Tony Gregory arrived on the scene with his Dublin inner city street cred and open-neck shirt to make it all a tad more casual.

Then Mick Wallace came along and went full-tramp, with unkempt locks and pink tee-shirts that all look like a white one that ran with a red one in the wash. And suddenly, you have a whole left-wing cohort without a tie to their name between them.

So the rules were relaxed in the corridors of power – and now the BBC is breaking its age-old rules on dress code too….in an effort to seem more authentic and relevant in this social media era.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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