NEWSTALK RADIO station breached the rights to privacy of civil servants by putting them live on air without their permission, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission has ruled.
In a judgment to be published shortly, the commission said the station's conduct was "unwarranted". The station will now have to apologise formally on air to the officials and read out a statement dictated by the complaints body.
The independent station's Your Callprogramme, hosted by Brenda Power, began last November to make calls live on air directly to State offices. However, relations between Newstalk and the Government deteriorated sharply after civil servants complained that they were put on air without their permission.
In retaliation, a large number of Ministers boycotted the station, and some have only begun to appear again since the programme abandoned the calls six weeks ago.
The decision to make such calls caused some division within the station as other programmes suffered by losing ministerial interviews.
Government press secretary Eoghan Ó Neachtáin met station executives during the height of the controversy, but no compromise was reached.
In a letter to one of the complainants, the commission said the fact that he was a civil servant did "not mean that he has no right to consent or not to consent to participate in a programme.
"The commission is of the opinion that he is still entitled to an expectation of privacy in his workplace unless there is an overriding public interest."
Ms Power's declaration that she was calling the press officer "live on air because he was a press officer, paid for by the taxpayer" and working for a Minister, did not amount to an overriding public interest. "In the absence of any overriding public interest, the means of making this programme were unwarranted. The means employed to make the broadcast result in an unreasonable intrusion of [his] privacy."
Newstalk said that when it tried to pursue callers' stories that it believed were in the public interest, the station met resistance from appointed spokespersons.
"The station rejects the allegation that they have been guilty of encroaching on the privacy of individuals. The station has at all times tried to conduct its inquiries in a fair, balanced, courteous and professional manner," the commission noted in its judgment.
