Professor Crown affair - RTÉ has shirked from its duties

PULLING Professor John Crown, the consultant oncologist, from the Late Late Show on Friday night raises the most serious questions, not only in relation to what is happening within our health service, but also in relation to the issue of news management.

In a democracy the media is supposed to be the independent watchdog on the behaviour of government.

“The only security of all is in a free press,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of modern democracy.

“The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.”

Pulling Prof Crown from the Late Late Show was as unhealthy a development from the democratic standpoint as the current crisis in our health service is from the perspective of the health of the nation.

It is vital that the broadcast media should not only be independent, but should be seen to be so.

The professor has been particularly critical of the blatant intimidation of health professionals who have criticised the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE). The current plight of the health service in relation to cancer services was forewarned some years ago, but the warnings were suppressed and ignored.

We are paying among the highest wages in the world and the health service is gobbling up much of the national budget, yet we have, at best, what could only be described as a second-rate, or inferior health service.

It is grossly overstaffed with administrative officials, whose main contribution is to act as a drain on the health budget.

This country’s success rate in tackling cancer is the worst in western Europe.

Should anyone be surprised when people suspected of bowel cancer have had to wait from five to seven months for a colonoscopy?

We also had frightening reports in recent months of misdiagnoses of cancer at hospitals throughout the country.

The suggestion that Prof Crown was taken off the Late Late Show in the interest of balance is insulting to the intelligence of people.

The Department of Health and the HSE had plenty of time to get someone to represent their views. The most logical conclusion of their failure to put up a spokesperson was that they considered their position indefensible.

RTÉ is ultimately responsible to the people who pay the licence fee.

Yet it has nakedly shirked its responsibility and blatantly compounded this by the manner in which it drew a virtual curtain over the affair, with a blackout in the matter on new programmes yesterday.

RTÉ has shirked its duty, not on just some trifling issue, but on an issue that involves the lives of many people.

It involves not only those unfortunate people who are suffering from cancer today, but also those who may get the dreaded disease in the coming years when the policies of today come into effect.

All of those people and their loves ones are being betrayed.

This comes in the week that the Taoiseach complained about “rubbish” on television.

We will tolerate such news management only at our own peril and cost.