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Dr Michael Foley is professor emeritus at the school of media at TU Dublin – formerly DIT – also a member of the NUJ’s Ethics Council, and has been invited by the International federation of Journalists and UNESCO to write a syllabus on journalism safety and ethics.
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Because of the detailed nature of the podcast, I sent a rough cut of the show to Neil O’Gorman of RTÉ in advance for his comments a couple of days before publication, and invited his comments. Below is Neil’s response, with interjections in italics from myself.
Thank you for sending in advance. I have three comments/asks:
Given that your podcast is themed around bias and journalistic ethics, it is both misleading and unethical to not disclose upfront that the conversation with me was recorded without my knowledge. It is essential that you highlight this at the front of the piece in the interests of full disclosure and potential impact on my professional reputation.
On this same point, was Michael Foley informed that the conversation he has just heard was recorded without my knowledge, particularly as he is presented as an expert in ethics in journalism?
In the podcast it’s clear from my comments and the audio that I didn’t tell Neil in advance that I would record the call. RTÉ’s guidelines for its own journalists say secret recording is justified where there is “evidence of behaviour, or intention to carry out behaviour, that it is in the public interest to reveal”.
I emailed Neil at length and made it clear to him that I believe RTÉ, a public body in receipt of hundreds of millions of euro in public funds, have a duty to respond to valid queries. Despite repeated clarifications, Neil refused to respond meaningfully to a several questions regarding RTÉ’s compliance with its own rules. In particular I asked Neil to give a narrative explanation of how RTÉ arrive at conclusions which seem to fly in the face of known facts. Neil declined.
I feel it is fully justified to use the recording of Neil to illustrate that fact.
Given that your podcast is themed around bias and ethics in journalism; dismissing responses – fully approved official RTÉ responses – as ‘PR guff’ without sharing those responses is disingenuous and also misleading. In particular, we have stated clearly that this is not a sponsorship. RTÉ is clear on that. Why not let your listeners decide?
I asked Neil to give an example of any RTÉ response to a question from me that I had not included in the podcast. He was unable to do so.
Significantly, you present a conversation with me – recorded against my knowledge – as definitive comment from RTÉ. It is not. Rather the conversation raised new issues which I asked you to put in writing and was the beginning of a number of exchanges in which RTÉ – not me personally – responded to a series of questions. These responses do not appear and suggest bias on your part.
RTÉ declined to answer the key questions that I asked. I fully stand over describing long, non-responsive texts which were sent in the place of answers to my questions as ‘PR guff’.
I would ask that you take these comments into full consideration before publishing the final version of your podcast.
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Our national broadcaster, RTÉ has pretty strict rules on balance and fairness in what they broadcast. Obviously RTÉ can’t tell lies about people, but the rules go much further, because you can be very biased, without ever telling any actual lies. For one, to be biased, you could just ignore some stories. Another form of bias is to always cover only one aspect of a story, and ignore another aspect.
For example, take two American websites, the far-right Breitbart, and the left-wing Huffington Post. They cover immigration in radically different ways. On Breitbart, any negative story about an immigrant will be splashed over their website. Any immigrant committing a crime, even getting a parking ticket gets huge coverage. By contrast, on Huffington Post, any immigrant kid getting so much as a gold star for their homework is a heart-warming tale of triumph over adversity.
Without ever telling an actual lie, those sites, banging out either negative or positive stories, day after day, month after month, they affect the perception of their readers. If, every time a topic is mentioned, it is always in a negative or always positive way, that has an impact.
So, to be balanced, Section 2.3 of RTÉ’s guidelines says that they maintain a balance of opinion that reflects the weight of evidence, ensures fair treatment, is open-minded, and provides opportunities over time so that no significant strand of thought is ignored or under-represented. Keep that in mind, no significant strand of thought is ignored or under-represented. Those are the rules.
RTÉ copies the BBC in much of these rules, but RTÉ relies on commercial funding for more than half its income, so there is the added danger for RTÉ that commercial interests will influence its content, and it has rules to deal with this as well.
RTÉ has two revenue streams here, first there’s advertising – 30 second slots to say buy this soap powder or those baked beans or whatever; and sponsorship of programmes so, a company’s image is enhanced by association. This programme is brought to you by the nice people at Acme Corporation, or whatever. Here, the weather is sponsored by ESB Networks.
Everyone knows what an ad is, but sponsorship is specifically defined in RTÉ’s rules; there are two tests – first, the sponsor makes a contribution in cash or kind, and secondly the sponsor gets a mention on air. The ESB pay RTÉ money, and RTÉ puts a in plug for the ESB, so to speak.
Now, for sponsored programmes there are particular rules, these are designed to prevent RTÉ from being unduly influenced by their sponsors. In particular, the sponsor of a programme is not allowed to have any input at all into the editorial content of the programme that they are sponsoring; also sponsors are not allowed to sponsor a programme that could touch on their interests.
For example, RTÉ coverage of the ploughing championships was sponsored by Aldi. But Aldi would not be allowed to sponsor, say, a consumer programme that commented on supermarkets; and Aldi is allowed to sponsor the ploughing championships, a farm equipment manufacturer would not be. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, even if they don’t have any editorial input, it might create the perception that they do, and that would bring RTÉ into disrepute.
More importantly, if someone working for the sponsored show, a producer or a presenter, if they knew that ultimately, their paycheck is being paid by a particular company, that is likely to sit in the back of their mind and subtly influence their decisions. That’s why no company can sponsor a programme that could touch on their area of concern, and there’s no sponsorship of news & current affairs programmes at all, because almost anyone could end up being the subject of news coverage.
The issue that I pursued with RTÉ was AA Roadwatch. The AA is a strange organisation. It was founded in the UK more than 100 years ago, specifically to campaign against speed limits. It was owned by its members until 1999 when it became a public company, it now has annual revenue of well over €1b.
Through the years, as well as campaigning against speed limits, they have campaigned extensively against seat belts, against unleaded petrol, against public transport projects, and against taxation of the motor industry which they regard as unfair.
In the 1990s, the AA in Ireland began to provide traffic news inserts on RTÉ radio, and this has grown so that they now provide more than 150 broadcasts per week on RTÉ, plus about 50 more on TodayFM. They have a series of little one-person studios at 21 South William Street, in the centre of Dublin, and the people who write and read the broadcasts are AA staff members, they’re employed by the AA, not by RTÉ.
Those AA staff members typically rattle off a few street names followed by an adjective like chock-a-block, bumper-to-bumper or, my favourite, jammers. Like any news, it gives information after the fact, and it’s difficult to see how any driver could use information like ‘an earlier crash has been cleared’, even if they were driving on one of the half-a-dozen routes included in the bulletin.
Google maps gives live traffic speeds for every road in the country, and the overwhelming majority of Irish drivers have a smartphone, so it’s not clear what useful service AA Roadwatch is providing to anyone.
It’s also notable that the locations featured are overwhelmingly middle-class; junctions serving posh areas of south Dublin have become famous, such as at Knocklyon, and Carrickmines. It seems that working class areas don’t have any transport problems at all.
One of the first AA Roadwatch presenters, Conor Faughnan, has become a household name as probably the best-known industry lobbyist in the country. In this role, Faughnan has appeared hundreds and hundreds of times on RTÉ.
As well as lobbying, the AA also is a major player in the insurance business.
Remember, RTÉ’s own guidelines define a sponsored programme as a programme where any type of contribution is made in return for promoting the contributor’s name.
I would have thought that an idiot in a hurry would see that this means AA Roadwatch is a sponsored programme. The AA pay the salaries of the presenters and they pay the rent on the studios, and in return they get a name check on air, hundreds of times a week. In fact, the AA often also promote their own web address, for the website they use for their political campaigns, and to sell their insurance, but that’s not necessary to establish that it’s a sponsored programme, just that they meet some of the costs of the broadcast, and they get a name check; that puts it within the definition.
I think that that’s breaking RTÉ’s rules.
First off, remember that the sponsor is not allowed to have any input whatsoever into the content of the programme that they sponsor. In this case, they have total editorial control. AA employees write the script and then read it on air themselves.
Secondly, you can’t sponsor programmes where you have an interest in the content, like Aldi can’t sponsor a programme about supermarkets. The AA are by far the biggest motor industry lobbying organisation in the country. The content of AA Roadwatch is clearly something that matters to them; I’ll come back to that in a bit.
But there’s a third rule that RTÉ are breaking. No sponsorship at all is allowed from any political or campaigning group. It doesn’t matter if you’re Save the Eighth, Fianna Fáil, Right 2 Water, the Workers’ Party, or the Roscommon Hospital Campaign; on RTÉ you’re not allowed to advertise and you’re not allowed to sponsor. Full stop
Now, when I mentioned these issues to some RTÉ staff, many of them shrugged their shoulders and said ‘But it’s just the traffic news’. Several of them compared it to Met Éireann supplying the weather. I don’t accept that, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Met Éireann staff are civil servants who are not allowed to promote political causes. By contrast, the AA explicitly say on their website that they run political campaigns. As well as media pressure, the AA also do vigorous behind-the-scenes lobbying of government officials and ministers to try to change transport policy.
And the content of AA Roadwatch has a specific relevance to that. For example, the AA campaigned hard, with some success, against the construction of the Luas. The project was delayed for years, reduced in scale and the two lines that were built were shortened so that initially they didn’t even meet.
In AA Roadwatch broadcasts, the AA doesn’t normally dish out blame for the traffic problems they report on, they might talk about an accident causing congestion, but they don’t say whose fault it was. But during the two construction phases of the Luas, one of the most common items carried on AA Roadwatch was delays due to Luas works. On almost every slot they had some mention of Luas works causing congestion, Luas works slowing traffic, traffic diverted to move services for Luas, road closed for Luas works, stop and go system for Luas works, Luas delay, Luas problem, Luas congestion Luas traffic jam, over and over.
I’m not suggesting they said anything untrue. But, like the left- and right-wing American news sites choosing to highlight either every good or every bad story about immigration, you don’t have to lie to promote your opinion. If you have a big enough platform, you can just repeat over and over the topic that suits you, and ignore the one that doesn’t.
You can be certain that AA Roadwatch never reports on congestion caused by Ireland’s excessive car dependence; you never hear about delays caused by lack of investment in public transport, they never mention traffic jams caused by poorly planned developments miles from any amenities.
Now, whether you agree or disagree with the AA’s campaigns; you can’t argue the fact that the AA are making editorial decisions that impact directly on the areas of public policy that they campaign on.
There’s another problem. Even if the reporting is balanced, the very fact something is reported 150 times a week on our national broadcaster is a signal that it is a national priority. If we cut from the Dáil or from the White House to hear that traffic is slow-but-moving on the Lower Glanmire Road, it sends a message that that issue is more important than somebody waiting in the rain in a working-class area for a bus that never shows up, or living in a town in Ireland where there’s no public transport at all.
And, for the AA, this strategy works. I can prove it. Regardless of the effect on public opinion, just the effect of politicians personally listening to AA Roadwatch makes politicians more amenable to the AA’s lobbying. How do I know? Because they say so, it’s on the Dáil record.
That’s TDs Catherine Murphy, Stephen Donnelly, Seán Ó Fearghaíl, Dan Neville, and Derek Keating all citing AA Roadwatch as empirical evidence which they say should guide transport spending. Many other TDs and senators have done the same.
When I made a complaint on this basis to RTÉ, they had a clever response. They said that sponsorship rules don’t apply to AA Roadwatch, because it’s not a sponsored programme. That doesn’t really get them out of jail free, because if you regard AA Roadwatch as a non-sponsored programme, there are a whole other set of rules that it’s clearly breaking. RTÉ has a set of rules for advertisements, a set for in-house productions, a set for external productions, and each set says that RTÉ can’t hand over editorial control to partisan outside groups.
But, I gotta hand it to them, that’s a crafty way to get around the rules. If you want to make a complaint, you have to say what rule you are objecting under, but if they won’t tell you what set of rules apply, you can’t say for sure what rule they’re breaking.
In most cases, anyway. But there is one cardinal rule that RTÉ value highly, the independence of their news coverage. They really hate being accused of bias. For that reason, the rules on news are much stricter; for example, there’s no sponsorship at all allowed of news programmes.
RTÉ has allowed the AA to run a coach and four through this rule. For years, guests being interviewed on Morning Ireland, on Drivetime and other programmes were often announced as talking ‘from the AA Roadwatch studio’.
Oftentimes, the guest in question was Conor Faughnan himself, but dozens of other guests were directed to the AA building, greeted by AA staff, and seated in one of their little studios where they could put on headphones, hear the RTÉ presenter and give their interview down-the-line.
This was a nice little favour from the AA to RTÉ news programmes, convenient for guests who didn’t have to schlep it out to Montrose, and saving RTÉ the expense of setting up a remote studio of their own. Convenient, helpful, free and totally against the rules. It puts RTÉ editors and journalists in an invidious position where they have to choose between the obligation that the AA’s generosity puts them under, or reporting objectively on the topics that the AA campaigns on.
As I said, I have been pursuing this for a while, and I said to RTÉ that AA Roadwatch is clearly a sponsored programme, they said it’s not. No explanation, just it’s not. So I asked them what is it? And they answered it’s not a sponsored programme. And I asked again, what is it, and they wouldn’t give a straight answer.
So, two and a half years ago, when I had the chance to interview Donal Byrne, a senior news editor at RTÉ who has worked with Morning Ireland for years, I included this as one of the questions that I wanted to ask.
So no joy there, although later Donal did say to me that he would find out who I could get an answer from in RTÉ corporate. I emailed him several times after the podcast. Unfortunately, he never replied.
So I went back to Karina Ryan, she was the RTÉ PR contact who had set up the interview with Donal in the first place, and I asked if she could help. I emailed her, and I sent her reminders. Weeks passed. She never answered. I also got another PR contact in RTÉ, Laura Fitzgerald, and followed up the queries with her. Again, no answer, and there it rested for a couple of years.
Then in September last year I got in contact of Neil O’Gorman, the Corporate Communications Manager for RTÉ, because I wanted to do a wide-ranging interview with an RTÉ spokesperson, and he would be the person to arrange it, and I mentioned to him that I would like to include that question. He said he would get an answer.
A week later I emailed him a reminder, no answer, and a month after that I called him to remind him of the question again, he said that he would get an answer within a day or two. Another week went by, I sent another reminder, he promised to get the answer. Another month later, I sent another reminder, we’re up to the middle of November now, and he promised to get back to me. Another two weeks later, still no answer and I was beginning to think that I just might getting a runaround, so I called him again and this time I hit record.
So that was recorded on the 26th of November. I sent Neil an email after the phone call to make sure that he had the questions clear, precisely what does RTÉ classify AA Roadwatch as, and if they claimed it wasn’t a sponsored programme, then how could they explain that, and how could they justify use of a free AA studio for news interviews.
I also told Neil that I believe RTÉ, as a publically-funded body has duty to explain itself to the public and that if RTÉ failed to answer, I would still report on the issue and use that recording you just heard to highlight that failing.
Two days later, Neil emailed me with some PR guff that didn’t address my questions at all other than to say “RTÉ News does not currently use studios funded by the AA”.
I replied saying that he had committed to answer my questions, not just to give PR blather about how great and independent RTÉ is, and to say that the statement that RTÉ News does not currently use AA studios is ambiguous. Did that mean that they weren’t using the studio on that day, or at that exact time, or did it mean that they had a general policy of not using AA studios anymore?
There followed a long series of emails back and forth, with Neil dodging and affecting not to understand questions. At different points he asked me what did I mean by AA Roadwatch, is that the traffic news segments, he suggested that I should ask the AA about RTÉ policy rather than ask RTÉ, and he suggested I should contact RTÉ’s freedom of information officer.
I did eventually drag out of Neil an admission that RTÉ has no particular policy of not using the AA studio for interviewing news guests, they just happened not to be using it at the particular time he wrote his answer. He wouldn’t say when they last used it. I asked whether they pay the going rate for renting a studio, or accepted its use for free, in breach of their own rulebook. Neil did not answer.
I asked multiple times whether RTÉ accepted the fairly obvious conclusion that the AA supplying traffic updates in return for promoting its name meets their own definition of sponsorship, and I got an answer, of sorts. Quote, “AA Roadwatch does not sponsor these programmes. Rather, RTÉ has a commercial agreement with AA Roadwatch to provide a service,” which did sound like an answer. But was it?
There exists a thing called a non-denial denial. That’s when someone is asked about something, and they give an answer that sounds like a denial, but on close reading isn’t. The most famous example comes from Bill Clinton, when he was asked whether he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky; he said this.
Now that sounds very much like he’s denying having had an affair, but the deception turns on what exactly is meant by sexual relations; in the US South, that means intercourse, which wasn’t exactly what they did. So although he deliberately gave an totally false impression, he was clever enough to do that without actually telling a lie.
So when I looked at Neil O’Gorman saying that RTÉ in fact had a commercial arrangement with the AA, I thought hang on, a sponsorship deal is a commercial arrangement. So if he’s saying that they have a commercial arrangement, that’s not a denial that that arrangement amounts to sponsorship within RTÉ rules. I made this point to Neil, I even emailed him the link to the Wikipedia page describing a non-denial denial, but he refused to address the point.
Neil left me with a very bland statement saying, in part, “RTÉ is satisfied that the agreement between RTÉ and AA Roadwatch for the provision of services, i.e. traffic and travel updates, is fully compliant” with the Broadcasting Authority’s regulations.
