Prime Time Investigates suspension is bad news for Irish journalism

THE egregious libel of Fr. Kevin Reynolds is the nadir of RTÉ’s long tradition of broadcasting, but the increasingly vitriolic levels of abuse, directed towards the station, are hard to fathom.

First thing’s first — there is no way to fully ameliorate the extraordinary hurt and pain that was caused to Fr. Reynolds by the discredited Mission to Prey programme.

For a priest who devoted the majority of his career to missionary work in Africa, the accusation that he raped a vulnerable Kenyan teenager, and fathered her child, was utterly repellent.