BROADCASTER MARIAN Finucane, launching her book The Saturday Interviews 2005-2011last night, praised her former editor, the late Michael Littleton, who had acted as a rock between her and the very socially conservative RTÉ of the time.
On hand to launch the book was journalist Sam Smyth, whose Sunday radio programme was cut from Today FM’s schedules in recent weeks.
Smyth said Finucane’s real talent lay in “listening” before “poking and cajoling” and getting at the truth.
He called her challenge to the “hubris” of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick as a “milestone in public service broadcasting”. He said Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary was “deadly suspicious of her”, but she had “coaxed him out to play on air”.
Asked about the end of his Today FM show, he said his former employer and owner of the station Denis O’Brien was “entitled to say what he wants”. Smyth described himself as a “great believer in free speech”.
He was responding to questions about an article by Mr O'Brien in yesterday's Irish Timesin which he said because the station had decided to drop a presenter "of a programme that has been running for 14 years and had falling audience numbers, suddenly there is an eagerness to depict me as a pariah among journalists, columnists and broadcasters".
Finucane also responded to questions about her salary following the publication this week of RTÉ’s earning list for 2009, which showed a 10 per cent cut in her earnings to €513,270. “I have taken all the cuts I was asked to and I’ll do whatever has to be done,” she said. “I fully understand that things have absolutely changed – the climate, the mood has changed, the country.”
