Fergus Finlay: RTÉ has more friends than enemies who want to see it thrive again

RTÉ’s new director general Kevin Bakhurst.  The biggest job is the restoration of RTÉ’s authority.

Dear Kevin Bakhurst, Forgive the formality. We’ve never met, and you wouldn’t know me from Adam. But like thousands of us, I’m a stakeholder in RTÉ. So my first purpose in writing this cheeky letter to you is to express the hope that you succeed. Whether we know it or not, we all have a vested interest in your success. 

I wrote here a couple of weeks ago that if RTÉ goes down the drain, a brick falls out of the wall of our democracy. And that can’t be allowed to happen.

I took the liberty of looking you up. Most of your background is in news and current affairs — including being responsible for several award-winning news programmes. That makes you a bit unusual. From the very beginning, the tradition in RTÉ was not to have a programme maker in charge, and certainly not a new journalist. As often as not, RTÉ was run by engineers. Although that changed in recent years, you’re one of the very few DGs with a really strong news and current affairs background.

You’ve also had a stint in regulation, as an executive of the British media regulator Ofcom. That’s going to help too because it gives you a different perspective. It ought to enable you to see RTÉ from time to time as others see it. And it means you come equipped with the reasons core standards are necessary.

But hey, who am I telling? You’re off to a great start already. I’m guessing everyone who works in RTÉ was glad to see the email you sent them on Monday morning, and gladder still to hear of your plans to do a lot of walking around.

I was a CEO myself in my time. I worked with brilliant people, people doing important things, and people who always had a lot to say. They often didn’t say them though. One of the things I always struggled with was what they call internal communications. We had every form of internal communication available at the time — newsletters, emails, even occasionally letters in the post, mass meetings, everything. We would have had WhatsApp groups, but that hadn’t been invented yet.

I discovered over time that there is really only one form of internal communication that works. It’s called talking to the boss. And it has to be done in a way that is safe and feels safe. Talking and listening are the things that matter most. And I suspect you’ll find that the smaller the group you talk to the better it will be.

Respect

It is ultimately about generating respect. Respect for you, and respect between the people who work in RTÉ. Respect isn’t won by big salaries, flashy car allowances and an overweening sense of privilege and entitlement. We know that now if we didn’t know it before.

Respect is won by hard graft. The kind of hard graft that has produced last night’s RTÉ Investigates programme about animal welfare abuses in the dairy industry, for example.

As I’m writing this the programme hasn’t been broadcast but it’s already making a lot of waves. It’s RTÉ doing what it does best — and what it needs to be doing much more often. It’s not just that it has exposed wanton and unnecessary cruelty. Ireland’s dairy industry is a really powerful vested interest, backed by government departments and ministers and represented by active and well-resourced lobby groups. Of course, they’ll have to react to well-documented material coming from an authoritative source like RTÉ. But it won’t be welcome.

“An authoritative source like RTÉ”. I have to admit I have wondered in the last few weeks if I would ever use that phrase again. It proves, to me anyway, that all is not lost.

As long as respect continues to be built. Because right now, the relationship between RTÉ and politics is pretty well the opposite of where it needs to be

It’s often said that the appropriate relationship between an independent media and politics is one of an armed truce. RTÉ should be the organisation we trust to hold the feet of politics to the fire, to keep politics honest every day. Instead, it’s the other way around — it’s RTÉ that has the burning feet.

In the days of the French Revolution, the crowds used to gather when the sound of the wooden wheeled tumbrils could be heard bringing condemned prisoners to their end. I heard them again yesterday morning.

Sympathy for Tubridy

On Monday’s news bulletins, it was reported that pubs around the country were going to be broadcasting the Oireachtas channel this afternoon, so that pints could be enjoyed while watching the ritual shaming of Ryan Tubridy and his agent in front of not one but two Oireachtas committees.

Ryan Tubridy has been loved and admired for so long, and now appears to be the butt of everyone’s scorn and derision.

Acres of newsprint and hours of broadcast coverage will be used up tonight and tomorrow in analysing whether or not the two people survived and how they performed. They’ve been called on in advance to be humble, contrite, and accepting of their fate. We’ve done everything bar shave their heads.

I do know that Ryan Tubridy’s troubles have been caused by self-inflicted damage, but I can’t help feeling a huge amount of sympathy for someone who was much loved and admired for so long, and now appears to be the butt of everyone’s scorn and derision.

I don’t know how you’re going to deal with the aftermath of all this. You may decide to take what I might call the Alec Ferguson route — no one is bigger than the club and anyone who challenges the authority of the club is immediately dispensable. Or you may decide, as the leader of nearly 2,000 people, that one employee who has messed up deserves your help to rebuild his career in some appropriate way.

It's only one of the difficult decisions that lie ahead — and every one of them will demand both leadership skill and vision.

The biggest job is the restoration of RTÉ’s authority. That will never come again from any sense of entitlement among its leading lights. It can only happen through the restoration of the professionalism and high standards we’re all entitled to expect from RTÉ

In the next couple of years, we’re going to have presidential elections, European and local elections and a general election. The general election — at least as things look right now — could well result in seismic change for Ireland.

RTÉ must play a critically important role in every one of those contests. It must be able to challenge promises, offer honest criticism of policies, and help to hold candidates to account. We will need RTÉ to be at the very top of its game.

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So good luck, Mr Bakhurst. And try to remember this — no matter how much we might all have a go at RTÉ from time to time, we (most of us anyway) regard it as ours. It’s a great national institution that has weathered storms before. This is the toughest of times, but RTÉ has far more friends than enemies. We want to see it independent and we want to see it strong again. I think you’ll find as you talk to more and more people that RTÉ still matters. And that’s enough to be going on with.