TV3 MANAGEMENT has held a meeting with staff to explain the circumstances of its decision to disclose Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan’s cancer diagnosis in a broadcast on St Stephens Day.
However the station has denied a report that it had apologised to staff over its handling of the controversial broadcast.
Staff were addressed by TV3 chief executive David McRedmond last Tuesday in relation to the broadcast which provoked a storm of complaints to the station and to the Broadcasting Authority. TV3 director of news Andrew Hanlon, who made the decision to broadcast, was on holidays last week.
TV3 spokeswoman Maureen Catterson said the meeting was to explain the reasons for broadcasting and not to apologise, as had been suggested in some reports yesterday. The briefing was on the lines of the statement issued to the Tonight with Vincent Browne programme last week in advance of a debate about the broadcast.
That statement said Mr Lenihan’s pancreatic cancer was a “legitimate and important news story” and the broadcast by the station’s political editor Ursula Halligan was properly sourced.
It acknowledged that the much-criticised timing of the broadcast was a “profoundly difficult judgment call” and that others might have a different view of it.
Last week Mr Lenihan accepted that news of his illness was a matter of legitimate concern, but he said there was no “real public interest in disclosing it on St Stephen’s Day as opposed to January 4th”.
