RTÉ should have admitted it made a right hash of drugs ‘documentary’
It is that people are sufficiently interested to care about their relationship with RTÉ and to be angry when the necessary trust between the station and the public is broken. It derives partly from the fact that every TV owner has to fund the station to the tune of €158 each year, even if they do not want any of its output. If RTÉ is going to spend their money, it had better provide some value for the outlay.
But more importantly, there is a belief that, as the largest broadcaster and with the largest income from a variety of sources, RTÉ must fulfil its mandate to serve the public interest. Presenting fiction as fact — and High Society was dubbed a factual programme — does not meet the necessary public interest criteria.
This is why RTÉ’s continued defence of High Society — both in a statement from the station authority on Monday and in a presentation to the Oireachtas committee on broadcasting on Tuesday — is mysterious. RTÉ authority chairperson Mary Finan said that 82% of the programme’s content was verified by RTÉ, as if that should impress anyone. She added that for the rest the station had relied on assurances from Gill and Macmillan — the publishers of the book on which the programme was based — and its lawyers that the claims contained in the book were accurate.
This is an extraordinary admission. Whatever about the outsourcing of programme-making — a legitimate exercise, as long as proper checks and balances are in place to ensure that what RTÉ takes the responsibility to broadcast meets required standards — outsourcing responsibility for the truthfulness and accuracy of content is something else entirely.
RTÉ is saying this two-part series included a new style of presentation, involving “reconstructions” of scenes using actors rather than the principals who gave the interviews off-camera to reporter Justine Delaney Wilson. This is not a unique style, as it happens, but if that is what RTÉ is claiming, then why did it not pay special attention to ensuring that the content was accurate? Worse, RTÉ knew in advance of broadcast that the book was highly controversial, prompting much newspaper coverage and questions in the Dáil. There was a claim that a minister of some rank in the last government had admitted to Delaney Wilson in a taped conversation in Buswells Hotel that he had used cocaine and that he knew other politicians had done the same. Delaney Wilson had made similar claims about interviews with a pilot, a nun, a judge and a nurse in which they confessed to buying cocaine from criminals and using it. While many people thought it conceivable that such people would engage in drug-taking activity, it was less plausible that they would admit it on tape to an unknown journalist when there was a risk that their identities might be unmasked at a later stage. (That said, it is possible that a minister, under the influence of drink and/or drugs, seeking to impress an attractive young woman, would tell her what she wanted to hear). But that conclusion could not be reached in the absence of a tape that RTÉ had not heard.
It was incumbent on the station to get absolute proof of the claims it was about to broadcast given that they were coming from somebody with little or no track record. Unfortunately, she has said she has since destroyed the tape.
At this stage I should confess to one of the worst of my many mistakes during my career as a journalist. Many competing newspapers have a bad habit of lifting apparently “better” stories from the early editions of other newspapers. It is a very risky business. Just over 10 years ago, shortly after I became editor of The Sunday Tribune, I published a totally incorrect (and damaging) story about two leading figures in the Northern Irish peace process.
I was told about the story on a Saturday evening by the editor of another newspaper — with whom we were in limited competition — that was running it on the front page of its first editions.
When I asked him how sure he was that it was accurate, he said it was 100% accurate and that we should put it into our later editions as other papers were sure to do so. Naively, this was what I did.
Within days I was informed that the story was fabricated and that I was facing libel writs from two people. Fortunately, one of my colleagues was able to persuade the individuals — whom he knew well — not to sue, but we did publish a grovelling apology. Two lessons were learnt. The first was to apologise when you know you have done something wrong. The second was never to trust what somebody else was publishing as true, irrespective of whether their lawyers had approved it. From that time on, when it came to following up on stories in other publications, our reporters always did their own checks.
For RTÉ not to have done that left itself open not just to potential libel actions from all ministers and judges — there is precedent set by county councillors for a class action. It also left it open to the claims that have emerged that it played hard and fast with the facts to suit its dramatisation.
RTE’s continued defence now that this has been established is remarkable. In its statement on Monday it told us that it was not publishing the report of its internal investigation but has asked us to take it on trust that it is “direct and frank” and is an “honest recognition of shortcomings”.
That was a big ask and one that RTÉ journalists would be unlikely to accept from politicians and businesspeople, for example, in comparable circumstances.
DESPITE RTÉ’s claims, no public interest was served by the broadcast of this programme and the views of professional specialists in drug rehabilitation are of no consequence, especially as many of them featured in the programme.
For the RTÉ authority to claim the programme has achieved the objective of focusing attention on middle-class cocaine use in Ireland is a classic case of the station wanting to have its cake and eat it. It is arrogant to claim that High Society has “stimulated a national discussion on the damage that cocaine use and abuse is causing our society”, as if such discourse was not underway in many media anyway.
If the stories about ministers, judges, pilots and the like cannot be verified, then they cannot be believed and the case about middle-class drug use is unproven. That is more than just “some shortcomings” in the editorial process, as RTÉ claimed. It is important for all broadcasters to maintain the trust of their audiences. Obviously there are times when we get it wrong, often badly, particularly in saying or doing the wrong thing during a live broadcast. But to do so when all the alarm sirens were blaring — as in this case — is incredible. RTÉ would have served itself and the public better by admitting it got things very badly wrong in airing High Society and by apologising for it. The damage done is by no means fatal to the station’s reputation, but by the same token it is not too late to restore public confidence in this important institution.
The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.
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