Ivan Yates to take aim at podcast co-host Matt Cooper at Oireachtas committee today

Former Fine Gael minister was dropped from a podcast after previously-undisclosed role in presidential election was revealed

Ivan Yates on 'Today with David McCullagh'. The former minister insists the 'flabbergasting' amount of coverage of his role in the recent presidential election was unwarranted. Picture: RTÉ

Broadcaster Ivan Yates is set to take aim at his former podcast partner Matt Cooper as he insists the “flabbergasting” amount of coverage of his role in the recent presidential election was unwarranted.

The former Fine Gael minister was dropped from his Path to Power podcast after failing to disclose that he provided media training to Fianna Fáil presidential candidate Jim Gavin on two occasions.

Regulator's queries  

Media watchdog Coimisiún na Meán contacted both RTÉ and Newstalk regarding Mr Yates’ appearances on the channels before, during, and after the election.

At the Oireachtas media committee today, Wednesday, Mr Yates is expected to take a swipe at his former Path to Power co-host and again defend training Mr Gavin.

In his opening statement, Mr Yates is due to tell the media committee that he is “flabbergasted at the volume of attention which has focused on my media training”.

He will note that media training is listed on his LinkedIn profile and “most people know” he was a TD, adding that “it hardly requires an enormous leap of imagination to think that I might have combined these interests at some point”.

Podcasts 'less cautious, more contrarian'

“Podcasts hold a very important space in the media ecosystem, and a major part of their attraction is that they take a looser, less cautious, more contrarian approach to issues and allow voices to be heard that are increasingly hard to hear in the so-called mainstream media,” Mr Yates will say.

“In the case of Path to Power, I don’t think that anybody was tuning in to hear two versions of Matt Cooper.

Former 'Path to Power' co-hosts Matt Cooper and Ivan Yates.

“The contrast between the styles and approaches of Matt on the one hand and myself on the other was a major attraction for listeners or viewers.

“I approached issues from a very different perspective — with deep political experience and connections and with relationships across the parties and with a real-world experience of both the economy and politics. This was part of the attraction.

Disclimers are 'a mood killer'

“A guaranteed mood-killer in that environment would have been if we had been forced to preface every debate with a disclaimer or a declaration of interests.”

Mr Yates will tell the committee that Coimisiún na Meán is examining the matter, and it is not their function to “run a parallel investigation”.

He will add: “I believe my predictions/punditry during elections were based solely on being as accurate and informative as possible. I don’t believe any training role altered the way I saw the election unfolding or the performance of the various candidates.” 

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He will warn against creating a register of interests as part of the broadcasting bill, arguing that “instead of controlling ‘hate speech’, we could limit ‘free speech’”.

“The reality is that people who express strong opinions on topics such as migration, Trump, the 'woke' agenda, and the nanny state don’t conform to a mainstream media consensus. A sanitised ‘politically correct’ media limits the national conversation.”