Savage comments misguided

Comments by Martin Gordon (Irish Examiner, June 4) about Tom Savage, chairman of the RTÉ Authority, are misguided on several grounds.

The sweeping statement that “the whole country was aware days before the infamous programme that there were problems” is simply not true.

Two independent investigations revealed that RTÉ editorial, legal and management personnel knew that there were very serious problems but they ignored them and proceeded to broadcast.

The media coverage of the programme on the following day did not indicate the seriousness of the problem that unfolded afterwards. Hence, “the whole country” was not aware.

The same editorial and management personnel bundled events as the truth unfolded. To suggest that the chairman of the authority would be aware of such operational matters as they occurred is to fail to understand the role of a board which is corporate governance.

The board employs the director of RTÉ who employs staff to manage and operate the service. The board should not be involved in day-to-day operational matters. A board sets the policies and delegates their implementation to management.

In the case of RTÉ and the Mission to Prey programme, editorial management decided to broadcast, not the chairman or the authority. If the chairman was to intervene in various programmes, how could editors and managers operate effectively?

It is difficult not to suspect that forces are now at work within RTÉ and the NUJ to divert attention away from where responsibility for appallingly bad decision-making and deplorable journalism clearly lay in this case, and which has to date cost RTÉ upwards of €1.5 million, plus a number of further court cases in the pipeline. Discussion on group-think obviously does not sit comfortably with the NUJ or former journalist, senator John Whelan, who prefers to divert attention towards Tom Savage using a flimsy conflict of interest argument that lacks substance.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív’s call for an audit of a selection of RTÉ programmes for group-think is more worthy of consideration than flimsy headline-seeking scape-goating of the chairman of RTÉ, Tom Savage, who I believe is a man of integrity.

Under the basic principles of corporate governance, Mr Gordon is misguided in believing that two previous chairmen of the RTÉ authority would not have permitted the broadcasting of the libellous Mission to Prey programme.

Matt Moran

Waterfall

Cork