Content providers play morality regulators of guilty until innocent

Exactly what moral principle is upheld by keeping an accused man offscreen is not easy to deduce, writes Terry Prone

Yesterday’s Sunday Independent carried a major scoop: Michael Colgan’s statement of apology. He said that when he left the Gate Theatre earlier this year after more than three decades at the top in the theatre, he believed he’d done a good job, had been a good boss, and been liked by his staff. Not all of that, he now acknowledges, was the reality.

One of the insights in his statement deserves to be made into a poster and stuck on the wall behind every ageing CEO: “When they laughed at my jokes, I thought it was because I was funny. I think now it was because I was their boss.”