Unchecked biases - Village Magazine

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This piece is about

systemic biases in

the State broadcaster:

about the unguarded

RTÉ grandee’s view on

radicals

he fact that two of the four panellists

on RTÉ’s conservative ‘Brendan’ radio

programme in early January were PR

heads sparked memories of an

excellent article in 2016 by Ronan

Lynch in this magazine which outlined how the

Marian Finucane radio programme pulled its

contributing panel largely from conservative, and

always from predictable, sources.

Unusually he supported his thesis with

analysis of the provenance of contributors over

the preceding year, deﬁnitively pinpointing bias.

From roughly 255 guests over the year up to 2014,

only around 90, or slightly over one third, were

women. Journalists and broadcasters (74) were

the most frequent guests, followed by politicians

(36), PR professionals (28), and legal

professionals (26), academics (25), and

businesspeople (18), with smaller groups of less

than ten people from the charity sector (8),

security analysts (5), doctors (5), economists (4).

Creative writers (5), and actors (5), made up the

rest. The headline revealed the bias: “Formulaic

and incestuous – promoting journalists and

politicians along with a strange number of PR and

legal voices”. Following up on the piece, Lynch

was told that RTÉ reserves absolute discretion to

choose such panels without accountability or

explanation, less still documented criteria.

Though the data need to be updated, the policy

has not changed.

This piece is about systemic biases in the State

broadcaster — centring not so much on how it

treats the mainstream old-party stalwarts but on

how it treats radical voices. Its political journalists

are clever enough to keep their views to

themselves. I thought it would be interesting to

see if there are any insights into the mentality of

RTÉ’s most powerful insiders. So this piece

focuses on broadcasters who’re not from the

political corps and on some who’ve retired and

are less careful than when they were in their

pomp. It is about the unguarded RTÉ grandee’s

view on radicals. It is not science.

RTÉ is an ideas-free oasis and as a rule avoids

challenging or subversive reporting or analysis.

This is most clearly and disappointingly

evidenced by the self-consciously banal daytime

gabfest of Radio 1.

It ignores poverty and inequality, working-

class voices and even unions.

It has been horribly slow to recognise the

reality of climate change, typically covering the

environment in contrived and inﬂammatory rows.

In general it too often recycles its own

talentlessness on its jaded chat and politics

shows.

It has paid its stars too much, though it is now

addressing that with cuts.

RTÉ shies away from serious allegations of

corruption against the government.

Somewhat contrariwise It settles defamation

actions too easily.

Unchecked

biases

An unscientiﬁc look

at how RTÉ treats

radical views

By Suzie Mélange

If the goal is to be ‘the Nation on the Airwaves’,

on the contrary it always appears like a clique.

Focusing on the late Marian Finucane, she —

once a ﬁrebrand — was for decades a reactionary,

indulgent of the civil war parties, of developer

types, of thumb-twiddling government lackeys,

fronting a magazine programme over-

comfortable with flaccid luvvies, PR-types,

ex-politicians, vested-interests and

establishment lawyers. Even Mick Heaney in the

clubby Irish Times described her show as

“clubby”. The 2018 Village article conﬁrms this.

We got insights when she tried to destroy Eamon

Ryan in 2004 for weed-smoking, and for example

from the following exchange in 2014 –

Marian Finucane to Richard Boyd Barrett’s

mother, Sinéad Cusack:“Well, I mean, it’s well

known now, that your son is People Before Proﬁt

and all of that. And you found him years…”

Sinead Cusack: “My son is not just People

Before Proﬁt. My son is Richard”.

I thought it might be useful to try to infer an RTÉ

mentality. I’ll do this from a combination of on-air

performance and insights into the real views of

key RTÉ managers and personalities, more often

let slip or encapsulated in uncontrolled post-

retirement social media accounts.

Hilary McGouran, one-time series editor of

‘Morning Ireland’ and managing director of RTÉ

television news let slip one part of the mentaility

in a talk she gave. According to website

anfocal.ie, McGouran dispensed the following

wisdom to journalism students at the University

of Limerick in 2015: “Ms McGouran warned young

journalists that ‘the fundamentals of journalism

shouldn’t change. It’s about telling stories and

stories that are engaging’”.

That’s not what it’s about, it’s about truth.

Only with that untruthed vision of journalism

could you have the following sign-o from Miriam

Ó Callaghan on ﬂagship TV current aairs

MEDIA

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The systemically banal daytime gabfest of Radio 1 ignores

poverty and inequality, working-class voices and even

unions; and the reality of climate change. It recycles its own

talentlessness on its jaded chat and politics shows, and

settles defamation actions too easily

programme, Prime Time on 25 November 2008.

Confusing debate and storytelling with

journalism she concluded a discussion on

climate change, the issue of our time which

threatens human civilisation, with: “This debate

will go on and on. It’s been an interesting

discussion and hopefully we’ll come back to it

again”. It was very RTÉ. Very Miriam.

Later in the programme there was an insight

into how beyond debate, she sees the story:

“There is a perception that environmentalists

care more about ﬁsh eggs than children and the

lives of children. That doesn’t mean the science

is wrong”. But there is an implication that the

science was not central, to RTÉ.

Donagh Diamond registered the same truth-

deprecation in RTÉ’s submission to the

Broadcasting Authority of Ireland defending —

against a complaint — “Prime Time’s obligation

to air the views of those who do not believe in the

scientiﬁc consensus on the impact of climate

change”. Diamond is now Editor of Prime Time.

Ken O’Shea, RTÉ Editor of Current Affairs

defended RTÉ’s decision to challenge the

scientiﬁc consensus on the basis that “dissenting

voices…feed and inform the debate”, allowing

“people to make up their own minds”.

More interestingly in view of the anal lack of

diversity of her contributors I did note during the

Varadkar Leak controversy, that RTÉ was

exceptionally slow to cover, that one of the Twitter

lurkers who was most vituperative was the under-

the-radar ex-editor of Marian’s unpassionfest,

Carol Louthe.

A jump into her twitter feed shows lots of nice

pro-Ukrainian stu, hostility to Mick and Claire,

anti SFery — especially on question marks about

its ﬁnances, and a bit of contempt for Paddy

Cosgrave.

So far, so…moderate.

Certainly she has a tendency to retweet right-

wing Fine Gael troll, FG social media team man

Paul Duggan, aka Tull McAdoo, slagging-o, for

example, Richard Boyd Barrett’s travel expenses,

she retweeted someone in February who wrote of

Paul Murphy: “Imagine this child trying to run a

govt dept?” and styled the Le Chéile anti-racism

marchers “a rabble”. But what attracted my

attention to her was the vehemence of her

antagonism to the Leak story: “Village are really

dragging the arse out of this with little to show

after coat-trailing, nudging and winking for over

a week”…Freezing hot story”. The pro-

establishment instinct is egregious.

Some of these are bit players. Let’s look at the

big beasts.

Ryan Tubridy, though purportedly bookish,

keeps it showbiz on the soon-to-be-rehosted Late

Late Show. The intellectual peasantry will never

tire of free holidays and tickets for the consumerist

but maudlin Toy Show. He gave the game away

when attacking Paul Murphy in 2015 in what

broadsheet.ie described as “an unusually

hostile, poorly researched and unpleasant piece

of political chat showing”. Tubridy introduced the

TD thus: “My next guest is a man of numbers. He

spent three years as a member of the European

Parliament, he’s been a member of Dáil Éireann

for just four months but in his campaigning

history, he’s been arrested ﬁve times. Would you

welcome please, Paul Murphy, TD”.

The interview included exchanges like the

following –

Tubridy: just looking at the things that you’re

anti. And I’m curious to know what you’re pro

because you’re anti water charges and anti

property tax and you’re anti bin charges and

you’re anti bailout and you’re anti college fees

and you’re anti austerity. So where’s the pro in

the Paul Murphy?”.

Murphy:“I’m pro-Socialism….”.

And the following –

Tubridy: “So what are you doing [in Leinster

House] then?”.

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Murphy: “Well, because I’m a Socialist

activist”.

Tubridy:“Right”.

Murphy:“Right. And I think we can ﬁght for

fundamental change in society”.

Tubridy:“Right”.

Claire Byrne is a safe and competent pair of

hands and has never for a second had an on-air

idea or felt that a challenge to orthodoxy might

have a place on an airwave. Some insight was

when her format was assailed last year on Claire

Byrne Live by a rampant Tony Groves of the left-

wing Tortoise Shack podcast. Her reaction was

an uptight and oended attempt to deny him

even his name: ”Tony, isn’t it””, she deigned in

one of the least professional moments of national

television in recent years. She’ll need to be more

adroit when the Late Late falls into her lap.

Áine Lawlor, hosting on ‘the Week in Politics’,

recently closed down Paul Murphy, that radical

man again, as if he was a late-night brothel. She

twice contradicted his accurate view that his

(since then resurrected) complaint to SIPO about

Leo Varadkar had been rejected on (dubious)

legal grounds not investigated and dismissed.

This was extraordinary. When he was forced twice

to assert the truth she did not have the manners

to apologise to him.

A good insight into the ethos of the most

central political journalists in RTÉ is provided by

David Davin Power’s Twitter account. Davin-

Power was one of the ﬁrst presenters ofMorning

Ireland, and served from 2001 as RTÉ’s Political

Correspondent. His immortally open-ended

Twitter bio states: Journalist; commentator:

Public Aairs: available as speaker, conference

chair and much besides”.

His is the smuggest and tamest account on

Irish Twitter: full of rugby, nostalgia (for Ronan

Collins but mostly for the dead); and appeals to

political moderation, and extraordinarily often to

alleviate opprobrium on right-wing pariahs like

Enoch Burke, Kevin Myers and Jeremy Clarkson.

He triumphantly shared that Elon Musk had

managed to sack three quarters of Twitter’s

workforce with no service downside, but around

to defend himself when it turned out Twitter has

been subject to outages because of these layos.

DDP specialises in views like “Well worth a

read” for articles by David Quinn, whose move to

the Sindo he commends, and “must read it” for

articles recommended by Mary Kenny.

He engages with John McGuirk though he’d

draw the line at Gemma O’Doherty.

On the other hand he is left-sceptical. A typical

posting from the former arbiter of RTÉ’s political

line reads: “People before Proﬁt policy would

create more homelessness: we need apartments

and houses now”.

That’s a not-insignificant ideological

judgement, an implicit criticism of the former

Social Democrat leadership. His non-ideological

political frustrations, when revealed, seem to

lean against the anti-establishment parties:

“Sinn Fein deploring online abuse. Well well”.

His appetite for investigation is betrayed by the

following: “How about this for a real scandal.

False claims by minor opposition party could cost

taxpayers 60 million euro when bills for Siteserve

tribunal come in”.

Perhaps more clearcut are the histories of Sean

Duignan who presented The Week in Politics in

1995, the same year as he ﬁnished after four

years of being Government Press Secretary and

of George Lee who left RTÉ and became aFine

Gael TD for theDublin Southconstituency in June

2009, winning a by-election with a 53.4%

majority and who was referred to as a “celebrity

TD”. Eight months later he announced his

resignation both from Fine Gael and fromthe Dáil,

having spent nine months in politics. RTÉ”s

politics doyen, Lee has provided farmer-friendly

agricultural pieces and often farmer-friendly or

conservative pieces on the environment for the

last decade. This is not to dispute the integrity of

the journalism but to note its, small c,

conservative roots.

Not all RTÉ journalists are conservative by any

means. Philip Bouchier Hayes is strong on

climate. Charlie Bird was a stickie and a

communist. Vincent Browne worked for RTÉ.

Mary Regan worked for Village magazine. Joe

Duffy was a students union leader. Not

surprisingly there are prejudices of all sorts, but

many of them seem to be against radicalism and

in particular the radical parties of the left. It is

not too much to expect that there should be a

system to deal with this.

In 2021 the BBC published an impartiality

plan which included:

· “Thematic reviews” covering output in key

areas of public debate to ensure a breadth of

voices and viewpoints are reﬂected, with the

ﬁrst to cover UK public spending and taxation

· Increased responsibility for the BBC’s Editorial

Policy team, with reviews to content by

internal management to assess how much it

meets the corporation’s editorial standards

· Monitoring of such “impartiality metrics” as

editorial complaints, sta training, audience

perception and demographic data

· Making the BBC’s editorial guidelines “more

prominent and easy to use” for all BBC sta

· Putting two experts with non-BBC experience

on its Editorial Guidelines and Standards

Committee.

Commissioned by the BBC’s board, and

arising from the impartiality plan a report

published in January reviewed the BBC’s

coverage of government ﬁnancial policy. As part

of the process it reviewed 11,000 pieces of BBC

online, TV and radio content plus social media

posts from October 2021 to March 2022, and

spoke to more than 100 people inside and

outside the BBC.

We need something similar for RTÉ for there

are some indications that some of its journalists

are biased, particularly against radicalism on

the left.

If the goal for RTÉ is to be

the Nation on the Airwaves,

it always instead appears

like a clique

Too Lte, unless your rms re crossed