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MUCH MEDIA SPACE has been given to the impact of RTE’s Frontline Presidential Debate and its failings. And rightly so. A national election was undermined by the failure of this television programme to adhere to proper standards. This is an extraordinary and unprecedented situation. It truly was the ‘game-changer’ in the election. However, the task of all those involved and all those of us concerned with improving politics in Ireland is to learn from this sorry saga and to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that it can never happen again.
Unfortunately, reading the RTÉ Report and the BAI Compliance Committee’s response to it, I am concerned that an opportunity to really learn from what has happened is in danger of being lost. The crisis arising from The Frontline Presidential Debate was a symptom of a problem that is more fundamental than the failure to provide social media training, the failure to exclude relatives from the audience or even the failure to have an executive responsible for balance monitoring the debate. Rather, I believe it was a symptom of a fundamentally flawed view of the role of broadcasters in election debates. It was the symptom of a view which sees the broadcaster, the presenter and an activist audience as participants with equal status to the candidates who are supposed to be debating each other and seeking a mandate from viewers.
This flawed view has led to a situation where the hunt for ratings and programme brand-building becomes as important or more important than the quality of the debate. This problem did not begin with the Presidential Election. Indeed, because of our concerns about audience selection processes on The Frontline, Fianna Fáil refused to confirm our participation in the 2011 Frontline General Election Leaders’ Debate until we received assurances that the studio audience would be selected by an external organisation.
With no candidate in the Presidential Election, my party’s interest in this issue is not about the outcome of the election. I have spoken out because I believe that this is an important moment and we should use it to look forward and design a system and structure for election debates that protects the integrity of broadcasters and the democratic process. It is easy for politicians to criticise the media, but if we are going to do this, we have a responsibility to come forward with constructive suggestions on how things can be done differently.
For my part, I have written to the BAI to suggest that the time has come to create an Irish Election Debates Commission based on international best practices. This commission, comprising representatives from BAI, the broadcasters and political parties would come together in each election cycle to agree on the number, location and format of the principal debates. The Commission, rather than the individual production teams in individual broadcasters, would then take responsibility for ensuring that the format, audience selection, arrangements to ensure balance are all based on agreed best practice.
Given the centrality of televised debates in the election process, an Irish Election Debate Commission could also play a very valuable role in education and engagement with new voters outside election time and in a non-partisan way. This is a non party political initiative – it’s about improving everyone’s confidence in the election debate process.
Michael Moynihan is a Fianna Fáil TD for Cork North West. Michael plans to present detailed proposals to the BAI and broadcasters for an Irish Election Debates Commission to be established. If you would like to give you views and feedback on this policy proposal you can email Michael at renewal@fiannafail.ie
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Nonsense. Another quango. Simply scrap the TV licence and let that RTE shower compete on a level playing pitch with commercial TV ….see how they fare then!?!?
Oh yeah, that system works just *great* in the US!
+1
Agreed. For gods sake we need less commissions , committees, tribunals , etc. Rte pay their top people well : let them do their jobs properly. If they can’t , they should go. Simples.
Agreed, RTE is an overpaid talentless bunch that produces and buys the same shite as commercial channels, so why shouldn’t they join TV3?
Said it before and probably will day it again. Gallagher had stuff to hide. He may have been wrongly accused but if he had totally clear record he could easily have denied it. He was a bag man for FF. Not a crime but not an independent either
That’s pure nonsense and you know it he collected a cheque for a FF fundraising event, every party does it or what country or world are you living in ?
I’d say you collected plenty yourself golden
Brass neck, Golden.
Three words: sackcloth and ashes.
Gallagher was involved in FF at the highest level for years. He wasn’t just a poor innocent dropping leaflets. He was up to his neck in FF stink.
He was collecting donations of 5k (for this event) and in exchange FF were selling 30 mins talk time with the Taoiseach. They were renting out power and influence and they are utterly shameless and brazen about it.
This man sat on the National exec. of FF. You don’t get to a position like that without being a certain type of individual, with a flexible outlook on life and most people didn’t want to disgrace our Presidency and country by putting a man like that in there.
Just imagine how toxic it would have made trying to get investment from foreign businesses. Oh that is our President, his businesses all failed but all depended on state cash and grants. Don’t ask him about his accountancy practices, oh yeah he was a bag man for FF, he used go around banging on the doors of business and getting them to cough up. Yeah in some countries that kind of activity is illegal.
“With no candidate in the Presidential Election, my party’s interest in this issue is not about the outcome of the election.” That’s just simply not true Michael. You should have written that line as, “With our candidate Sean Gallagher posing as an independent, my party is pissed off that the country didn’t swallow yet another ‘stroke’ by our boys.”
SG’s FF connections were already in the public domain for some time. RTE has to be a neutral arbitar in election debates, if it expects candidates/parties to agree to participate in them. Therefore it was unacceoptable that:
- one candidate got asked 3 questions, while the media favourite MDH got only 2.
- PK invited SG’s opponents to interrogate him alone, while denying him the right to question them.
- No hostile questions were asked to MDH.
- Nepotism in the audience selection.
- Alleged coaching of audience members. One has already claimed he was coached.
Edit I mean MDH only got one question.
The problem is RTE is a semi-state organisation. And as with other Semi-state’s like FAS, The Arts Council & the Crafts Council their over bloated, flawed & have an inability to change.
100% agree. Everyone who has a tv must pay 165? euro a year to rte to maintain their presenters ridiculous salaries. All of them living in euro lined cocoon.. dont ask questions.
Maybe so, but there are many, many private sector organisations that are over bloated, flawed and unable to change by the same token.
The problem, from where I see it, is that Fianna Fáil still have many supporters in prominent places, and are trying to position Seánín, who, lest we forget, lied to the electorate about his FF connections from the start of the campaign, as victims of a Liberal Media™ stitch up.
Dear voodoo, bloated private companies are not of anyone’s concern other than the owners’. There is no law to take money from the citizens and gives it to a private bloated company. You have a choice to do business with them or not, unlike the RTE which we have to fund and are therefore entitled to have an opinion on their performance.
Secondly, that Sean had support and lobbying of FF and that he lied to the electorate does not imply that he is entitled to a stitch-up by the public broadcasting company. Remember, public broadcast company is there to provide fair and unbiased coverage of events. Unfortunately, stuffed with civil servant mentality relics, RTE struggles to hide anti-business bias and leftist preferences.
Dear Dom,
Gallagher wasn’t “stitched up” by anyone other than himself. He lied and misrepresented from the start of his campaign, and was just beginning to be found out before the debate.
With the things that were coming out about grants to his companies, €5k payments by GAA clubs for filling forms, it was beginning to look like his entrepreneurial skills consisted entirely of milking his FF connections … which, of course he had tried to deny.
He’s lucky that he can latch on to this tweet business to try and salvage what little is left of his reputation, with the way things were going, he was looking unqualified for Dragons Den, never mind the Presidency.
Yours, etc.
And another thing, the one Irish channel that consistently puts out genuinely innovative, cost effective, relevant, educational and entertaining programming is another example of “public sector inefficiency”, TG4.
And, in large measure, we have the worthy winner of the Presidential election to thank for that.
Dear Voodoo, you missed the point entirely. Whatever about the perceived drawbacks of Sean Gallagher, he is entitled to a fair treatment by any media, let alone the public media the sole existence of which is justified by the pretence of impartiality. Your response entirely misses this point and recycles the same point you made previously about your perception of the character of Sean Gallagher.
The point is that I don’t think he was stitched up to any extent. It was more a case of chickens coming home to roost for him – RTÉ were slack in reading out an unverified tweet, for sure, but it was not a “stitch up”. The man was already starting to come appart at the seams with all the porkies he was being caught out on
The point is that I think this is a case of FF sour grapes and spin, with the complicity of their many friends in RTÉ, public service and the media, to try and make themselves look like the victims of sharp practice and/or bias, where the reality is that they themselves were responsible for most of the sharp practice that went on over the course of the election campaign.
Gallagher got fair treatment, it was his own tactics that brought him down.
Come on, get over it and move on.
Torpedo I suppose you want us to get over the bank bosses, the lack of regulation, the backhanders politicians were taking, TD’s admitting to grand scale theft, members of our police force wiping out penalty points for the well connected and the big pensions being paid to corrupt X cabinet ministers too.
Absolutely not they are some of the major issues which need to be addressed. Not who got shafted in a tv program.
It isn’t just FF that is complaining about this. Pat Rabbitte has acknowledged it affected the result, and Leo Varadkar has cited RTE’s “Left Liberal’” agenda in this programme.
For the bagillionth time, Sean Gallagher hung himself out to dry with his dodgy evasiveness and then rudeness when confronted with his questionable business dealings and his unfortunate use of the word ‘envelope.’ All of which happened before ‘that tweet.’ I can’t believe that this, of all things, is what is sticking in the media’s craw- bury this presidential debate one and for all for the love of divine jaysus!
He still hasn’t answered the questions about his businesses dealings and practices. He being a FF big shot doesn’t have to worry about things like that. That is for the mere Irish. One thing for certain he has brass balls to run his business the way he did and do what he did.
No because he was clearly setup based on a bogus-tweet supporting admitted former IRA terrorist Martin McGuinness.
We need to get rid or RTE or privatise it.Tax payers money should not be supporting the obscene salaries for third rate presenters.
Sounds like a recipe for a fair and well balanced media. It worked fantastically under Rupert Murdoch, no matter what those overpaid, taxpayer-scamming bastards in the judiciary might say. Scrap any kind if public mandate and accountability in favour of a dominant news agency accountable only to its own profit margins.
What could possibly go wrong?
Perspectivesbyjack: firstly, RTE is not a news organisation, its mostly an entertainment channel. secondly, are you saying RTE is balanced in its news coverage?
I agree an independent broadcasting organisation would be great, but RTE isn’t it.
Fianna F?il seem to have become far more vocal on social issues lately. I agree largely with Coughlan, but I can’t help thinking that it’s a bit rich to hear a Fianna F?il TD getting indignant about transparency and objectivity.
It was not a debacle nor was it a ” sorry saga ” . It was a lucky escape from Fianna Fáil and their bag boys.
Lets have a debate about debates, lets create another Quango, lets have talks about talks….where will this nonsense end?
@ollie are you saying every member of FF goes around collecting cheques for the party ?
Not all… sometimes it’s a bundle of cash in a brown envelope.
No but the influential ones do, the people in charge and more often than not,what is given as a donation is a lot bigger than what the party receives.
The pilfering of donations is legendary in FF. It is well documented and the party has never filed a complaint against one person for it. Even when the theft was exposed.
Lots of its elected reps and members rob their own party blind, what did people expect would happen when they were in power.
I’d presume like any criminal org. that certain people have certain jobs to do. FF are the Kapo’s for Ireland.
Dedicated to all the angry begrudging hyprocrit keyboard bandits::::::——
A turkey is chatting with a bull.
“I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree,” sighs the turkey, “but I just haven’t got the energy.”
“Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?” replies the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients.”
The turkey pecks at a lump of dung and finds that it actually gives him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree.
The next day, after eating some more dung, he reaches the second branch.
Finally after a week, there he is proudly perched at the top of the tree.
Unfortunately he is spotted by a farmer, who shoots him out of the tree.
Moral of the story: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.
Is this article about rectifying deficiencies in RTE or , who may or not, could win what our national media station turned into a X-Factor contest.
The debate should not have been so close to the moratorium of news coverage. A fake story could come out on twitter and go viral during a moratorium in the future and skew results, so maybe we should get rid of it.
I think we should have an independent commissions commission, to make sure the commissions are doing their job.
Really wish the comments section hadn’t turned into a discussion about Sean Gallagher.
We do need some sort of independent Election Debate Commission, possibly comprised of retired judges or something. IT’s unacceptable to have people believe (whether we agree with them or not) that there’s any bias in any democratic election.
Look at what Micheal Moynihan and a few other mongs were up to in the Dáil.
That Moynihan who is a dairy farmer outside of politics acts like this is just adding to his reputation as being an immature fool and that is what they call him in FF. Outside of it they have an even lower opinion of the man.
have your say