The lowly journalists pay the highest price

A HEAVY price has been paid by Aoife Kavanagh.

The RTÉ reporter who sourced and presented the Prime Time Investigates programme on Fr Kevin Reynolds is out of a job. She is a young woman, hovering around the 40-year mark. That’s a lot of working life left to fill.

Unless she is independently wealthy, she is likely to suffer a drop in her quality of life. The public are under the impression that those who appear frequently on the airwaves must be raking it in.

Not so for journalists.

Few of them earn more than could be achieved in a good teaching post, usually minus the pension.

Some would say that a heavy price had to be paid. A grievous wrong was inflicted on Fr Reynolds. Reporting falsely that a priest had committed rape and fathered a child is about as bad as it can get.

The report of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland reflected badly on Kavanagh’s professionalism. The fact that she had theretofore been an excellent reporter, having shone many a light into dark corners, was beside the point. A horrendous mistake was made and somebody had to pay.

Ed Mulhall has also paid a heavy price. He has lost his job as the head of news and current affairs. He is well-respected in the media, and beyond. At 56, he is entitled to the redundancy package available to RTÉ employees, but a distinguished career has been blemished.

Others who were involved in the programme have left or been reassigned other duties, but Kavanagh and Mulhall have taken the major rap.

Do they deserve it?

Perhaps, on the basis of the wrong that was perpetrated. But there is also a serious case to be made that their culpability is being used to suck the heat from the saga and insulate others from blame.

The details of the wrong committed in the programme have been well-aired. The BAI report set out the careless practices that informed the programme.

What the BAI did not examine was how the station reacted in the aftermath of the broadcast.

Mistakes happen. But corporate governance should be judged on how an organisation reacts to mistakes.

The programme was broadcast on May 23. Within days, it should have been obvious that at the least a major question mark was hanging over the allegations aired.

All the evidence that has emerged suggests that there was an attempt to brazen it out.

A month after the broadcast, Reynolds’s solicitor, Robert Dore, was still writing to the station, saying that his client had been forced to stand down from his ministry and was anxious to have a paternity test as soon as possible.

An offer of a paternity test was first made prior to the broadcast, but not taken up by RTÉ.

Finally, six days after a letter written on June 28, RTÉ responded, “agreeing in principle to a paternity test,” but also claiming it was “fully satisfied it can stand over the allegations”.

Dore had to keep chasing them. On Jul 7, RTÉ confirmed it had retained a firm to carry out the test.

It would be nearly another two months before the priest would hear that the test had cleared him. Even accounting for what was described as “logistical” difficulties in dealing with the alleged victim in Kenya, that was an awful long wait. Eventually, it was conveyed to Reynolds that he was in the clear, not by RTÉ but by a newspaper reporter, who had been leaking the story. Fr Reynolds was officially notified a few days later.

Through all of this, the board of RTÉ was apparently kept in the dark.

The chairman, Tom Savage, has said that the first the board knew of it was at its September meeting.

In media circles, the enormity of what may have happened was a source of conversation from soon after the broadcast, yet the board of the biggest media organisation in the country didn’t discuss it until September.

On Sept 28, Reynolds was finally told that the station would be making an apology for the wrong committed. The following day, his solicitor Dore, was informed by RTÉ’s lawyers that the apology would be used by the station in the defamation action.

For four months, RTÉ prevaricated, during which time Reynolds lived under a cloud that he was a rapist. In legal terms, the delay greatly exacerbated the original wrong. For most of that time, the governing body was not formally made aware of the situation. Nobody is apparently responsible for any of that.

Then, it was time to send the infantry out over the trenches. A raft of inquiries were set up. On Nov 14, RTÉ’s head of corporate communications was quoted responding to media queries. “We will not be commenting on individual elements of the programme and its production, or on the possible outruns of the review activity, pending its completion”.

To do otherwise would have been to interfere with due process. A fortnight later, the titular head of RTÉ did just that. Tom Savage gave an interview to Niamh Horan, an entertainment reporter in the Sunday Independent.

“As far as I am concerned, in all the decisions that were made in Prime Time, Ed (Mulhall) would have been the, what I would call, the ultimate court of judgement and appeal,” he said.

Asked specifically about who had final call on the programme in question, he said, “Oh, in this case, Ed. Oh, absolutely.” (He also praised Mulhall’s service to RTÉ)

Savage is a highly efficient PR man who has been advising politicians for more than 30 years. He knew what he was doing, particularly in choosing his conduit.

Therein, it was decreed that the foul stuff would rise no further than Mulhall. Many senior journalists in RTÉ were understandably peeved at the ritual sacrifice of Mulhall, in the throes of due process.

The saga moved onto the publication of the BAI report eight days ago. Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte came out with all guns blazing. He was calling the RTÉ board to a meeting at 8am, Tuesday. He sounded like he was going to send skin and hair flying. The air was thick with the prospect of resignations.

Not a bit of it. Nothing came out of the meeting. Heads had already rolled, the hacks had taken the heat. Savage said afterwards that the issue of resignations was never even raised. Now, the board will submit quarterly reports to Rabbitte on their progress in implementing reforms, when the only real reform required is the application of basic journalistic standards. Rabbitte mustn’t believe his luck. There has been a discernible shift in the balance of power between government and the State-run broadcaster.

Many of Rabbitte’s predecessors, particularly in Fianna Fáil, would have given their right arm to enjoy the sway he now holds over the station. A terrible wrong was done to Fr Kevin Reynolds, and, in the first instance, those at the coalface are culpable.

But corporate governance at the station greatly exacerbated the wrong, and that has been brushed under the carpet. It’s just as well there’s a couple of journalists around to take all the heat.