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In Ireland,for the next generation, things seem to be getting better rather than worse. Two political sides have done their best to swallow their pride,differences, grudges and past hurts in order to improve the future outlook in their country.

Yesterday, after hundreds of years of bitterness and justified feelings of outrage on both sides, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley sat down at a table together. The table was diamond-shaped and certainly, one corner of it divided and even perhaps accentuated the distance between them, and to be sure, they did not shake hands. However, the divide was, in some small yet infinite manner, breached. The word "God" was even used by both sides

A fragile and vulnerable flame flickers. A future for North-Eastern Ireland's children under the stewardship of Gerry and Ian, Tony, Gordon and Bertie, beckons. What brought them together at last? Who knows? Perhaps a common mistrust of the Chancellor - Gordon Brown. Surely it could not have simply been the threat of water charges! Yet, there are those, who though not even on either of the two sides, who would see the flame snuffed out under the brutal boot, not of political ideology or religious/national divide, but of something much more cynical, mundane and temporal - the usual suspects of sales targets, money and ratings. I speak, of course, of the Media. The future of the next generation in Northern Ireland could be in their hands.

One would think, after years of reporting the anguish and bloodshed of "The Troubles" that the media would respect the hard slog of recent years to get to this point and more recently, that ten years of biting tongues, rising above perceived slights, meeting old enemies half-way, thinking twice before speaking and counting to ten before losing tempers, years of two steps forward and one step back, would count for something.

It appears not. There is an old adage that goes "Good News is not Newsworthy." Yesterday on Channel Four TVs Lunchtime News Programme in the UK we appeared to see an example of this taken a little further. "If there's no 'Bad News' let's make some." A historic day, six weeks in which anything could spark the gelignite of old animosities, politicians from both sides interviewed, yet still, from the journalist, the old tricks to find an angle, make news even if its bad to sell a story, to provoke, to jibe, to antagonise, to "stir things up." With so much at stake for the children of the next generation of Northeastern Ireland - this is now a

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