Prime Time makes one point but remains silent on several others
In my column about the death of Peter McCloskey and his dealings with the diocese of Limerick (Irish Examiner, April 19), I said that Prime Time incorrectly “claimed that another person made an allegation against the same priest back in 1957, that there was a settlement by the Church, and that the victim found all this out during his visit to Australia”.
David Nally’s letter appeared to take comfort from the fact that I only instanced one error by Prime Time and he argues with my account of things in that regard: “Prime Time did not report ... that Peter McCloskey discovered information on this second abuse allegation ‘during his visit to Australia’,” he says.
I am happy to acknowledge his correction. I accept that, at one point during the programme, Prime Time correctly reported that Mr McCloskey discovered the fact of that allegation after his return from Australia. However, there is a disquieting silence from David Nally about some serious, and damaging, inaccuracies in the Prime Time programme concerning this allegation.
Firstly, Prime Time incorrectly reported that the allegation was made in 1957 — leaving viewers with the impression that the Church knew all along that the priest in question had been accused of sex abuse. In fact, the Church authorities in Australia only received this allegation, which related to an incident in 1957, after Mr McCloskey’s return to Ireland in early 2004. Perhaps it was this inaccurate claim by Prime Time that led Mr McCloskey’s mother to say that the Church had known for 30 years that the priest in question was an abuser.
Secondly, presenter Miriam O’Callaghan did in fact claim that Mr McCloskey found out about this other allegation, and a ‘settlement’ relating to it, while in Australia. This would have confirmed viewers in the opinion that the Church had been very callous to Mr McCloskey if he had to travel across the world to learn of another allegation against the same priest of which the Church ‘knew’ all along.
Thirdly, Prime Time’s claim that there was a confidential ‘settlement’ in relation to the ‘1957’ allegation was incorrect. There has been no such settlement to date. It appears that the Archdiocese of Sydney supplied information to Mr McCloskey about another complainant who knew Mr McCloskey’s alleged abuser but did not have an allegation of abuse to make against him. The Church in Sydney made a pastoral gesture by paying a sum of money to this man in relation to professional counselling. Prime Time seems to have wrongly assumed from a document in its possession that this was a settlement in relation to sexual abuse and that it related to Mr McCloskey’s abuser.
In the light of all these inaccuracies, why did David Nally confine his letter to defending one narrow point without expressing a few mea culpas of his own?
The answer may lie in Prime Time’s approach to the Church and child sexual abuse generally. This was a programme where the Church was being asked if it was complicit in a man’s death. In such circumstances, good investigative journalism would require careful exploration of all sides before conducting interviews. All sides should then be interrogated with equal persistence and attention to accuracy.
That is not what happened in this case. Prime Time first presented a package in which the ‘case for the prosecution’ against the Church was laid out in fairly damning terms. The package included the inaccurate claim by a spokesperson for One in Four that the Limerick diocese’s first response to Mr McCloskey was to advise him to get a solicitor. (The truth was that the diocese first heard of the allegations by way of letter from the victim’s solicitor).
The Prime Time interviewer did not query this or any other of One in Four’s claims. The comments were simply carried. Nor was the incorrect claim put to Bishop Donal Murray when he was later interviewed on the programme.
Even if Prime Time had afforded Bishop Murray an opportunity to answer that claim, would that have been sufficient? Probably not. Damage is already done once a false accusation is aired. In the end, we are left to wonder what other assertions in Prime Time’s opening report were inaccurate.
The pressures and deadlines of broadcast journalism may be partly to blame for Prime Time’s approach. But it is no kind of balance when only one party to a controversial issue is being cross-examined. It is especially serious when that party is the subject of serious accusations, and when the investigator is a tax-funded public service broadcaster.
These are matters to which David Nally and the Prime Time team might usefully give consideration.
Rónán Mullen
Glasnevin
Dublin 11
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