On RTÉ Radio this month, Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan said: “I’m trying to get people to have faith in the public service broadcaster. We’re trying to get people to go back into their post office and pay their licence fee. And, invariably, people are going to ask, ‘For what?’”
Many people who pay their licence fee do indeed ask themselves what they are paying for. They may be annoyed about a particular programme, fed up with repeats, outraged at bloated presenter salaries or just partaking in what is something of a national sport: venting about the national broadcaster.
But it is not O’Donovan’s job to “get people to have faith” in RTÉ. That is RTÉ’s job, a challenge that also makes it a convenient whipping boy.
As a contributor to some RTÉ programmes, I do not pretend to be piously objective. Like us all, I have my own preferences and prejudices. It is striking, however, in trawling through historic writings how some critics have relished their venom.
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When Hugh Leonard was television critic for Hibernia magazine in 1972 he wrote: “If RTÉ were to be metamorphosised into a single human shape, that person would be a slouching corner boy who now and again makes a literate remark out of the corner of his poor mouth. Money may provide the wretch with clothes, but it will not, of itself, cure either his laziness or his ignorance.”
RTÉ’s relationship with government has always been similarly tricky, partly because of disagreement about what distinguishes public from government policy. Fifty years ago Hibernia declared the level of political control over RTÉ was “far more pervasive today than at any time since the station was established”.
This was partly due to the Troubles, but not just that. A decade previously, in October 1966, taoiseach Seán Lemass argued in the Dáil that RTÉ should not be completely independent of government supervision, saying: “The government have overall responsibility for its conduct and especially the obligation to ensure that all its programmes do not offend against the public interest or conflict with national policy as defined in national legislation.”
The context for those remarks was the government’s displeasure at the balance of television coverage of a National Farmers’ Association march.
We were back in that space recently. According to documents released to RTÉ after a Freedom of Information request, O’Donovan complained to Coimisiún na Meán about RTÉ’s “lack of balance” in its coverage of the recent fuel protests: the causes of complaints included a reporter broadcasting from inside an “unauthorised portacabin” used by protesters. O’Donovan subsequently dropped his call for a review of RTÉ’s coverage.
More recently, attention has switched to the highest-paid broadcasters. The appearance of RTÉ executives before Oireachtas committees has generated much performative outrage for the cameras. It is certainly appropriate that the spending of public money is scrutinised, but there is also the continuity of troubling assertions that suggest politicians are in charge of RTÉ.
At the Public Accounts Committee in October 2023, the Labour Party’s Alan Kelly told RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst: “This is not a two-way relationship ... We are the elected representatives. We are the people who vote to decide whether we give you money.”
It is questionable whether the relentless focus on the highest-paid broadcasters serves to deepen debate about public service broadcasting. What about a focus on those on lesser salaries who have worked consistently on cultural programming; those working on documentaries, arts, early-morning and educational programmes; as researchers, producers, and presenters; on programmes that are not ratings beasts, but epitomise public service?
It is telling that Catherine Bailey, the partner of the late presenter of RTÉ Radio’s Arena arts programme, Seán Rocks, felt compelled to highlight publicly her financial plight. Consider the work behind and in front of a microphone that goes into a broad arts programme broadcast five times a week. Taking a longer view, consider the priorities of those whose mission was to bring to light, in the title of a programme long ago presented by Liam Ó Murchú, Voices from the Hidden People.
Or consider the women of yesteryear who, as pointed out by Doireann Ní Bhriain, “were most isolated … daytime radio was their lifeline to the outside world”. Consider the dangerous work of cameraman Gay O’Brien in Derry in October 1968, which was seminal and internationalised the civil rights issue. Consider poet Roibeard Ó Faracháin, who became Radio Éireann’s first Talks Officer in 1939, and fostered Irish writers including Brendan Behan and Kate O’Brien. Consider the legacy of Gunnar Rugheimer, controller of programmes from 1963-1966, who insisted current affairs should be the “thumping heartbeat of the station”.
RTÉ should be accountable for its use of public money, but what has been focused on in recent years is far too selective.
