Blogs Bang the Drum While RTE Beats its Chest
Nov 13th, 2007 by Donagh
Helen Shaw has an interesting insiders take on the current Crown Affair (a title for a controversy that she seems to have taken directly from PO’Neill’s excellent post on Irish Election because she says, rather sarcastically, ‘the blogosphere drums are beating with the so-called John Crown Affair’).
The bones of her argument are actually fair enough – on the surface. There is no conspiracy concerning government interference with regard to how RTE discusses the health service. I mean are we to believe that the Director General of RTE is in such a relatively weak position that when a Government minister demands that such and such a person is not to appear on the Late Late Show that he feels he has no choice but to oblige?
There is part of me which suggest that yea, that’s exactly what happened, but I suspect the reality is a lot more nuanced, subtle and complex. Actually maybe not. Maybe it just appears complex. In fact, it’s just a mess of incompetence, complacency, fear and self censorship.
There is one thing that stood out for me in Helen Shaw’s piece in the Irish Times today and that was about how editorial decisions are made:
“Balance, fairness and impartiality feature high in the editorial framework of those decisions, and while you may not like the results as you hear them and see them every day on RTÉ television and radio, in reality they are decisions made by editors attempting to walk the thin line between creating informed debate and being fair, balanced and impartial.
And it can be a very thin line - particularly in the midst of a controversial running current affairs story, an election or civil unrest. In the end someone has to make the call. And with the best information available that is what editors do - and naturally accept the flack.”
If we look at this in the light of what decision was made in the case of RTE, we can probably see, if we take the above at face value, that the editors worried that the Late Late Show was going to turn into a full on attack on the Health Service. Indeed, the question is, why should it not have been?
The Government chose not to appear, which is its right. Should then the debate be limited in what could be said, in the interests of balance? If people were available to provide expert opinion why not let them provide that information or is raw information itself tainted with certain political bias? I have long been of the opinion that this notion of ‘balance’, like neat little conspiracy theories, is a red-herring too.
You see there are two sides to this balance thing. There is political balance, where competing political parties - parties in government for example, and opposition parties - are competing for the publics love and attention, and there is factual balance. A national broadcaster has a responsibility to ensure that programs have both, but they shouldn’t get the two mixed up.
It seems in this case RTE considered that allowing Crown to appear (leaving aside the issue of political interference) would lack political balance because Crown is recorded as criticising the two-tier health system. All parties in the opposition have criticised this yet it is very much core to how two parties in government, the major one and one of the minor ones, want to proceed.
RTE though shouldn’t have thought about the political balance in this case. Crown, and others critical of the health service, do not affiliate themselves with any political party or ideology, as Eamon Gilmore pointed out in the Dail debate on the subject.
The thing is, from a factual point of view, Crown is correct. But does that account for anything?
When he says that its common sense that there is no point in running regional hospitals into the ground before you put in place ‘centre of excellence’ he does so because he’s a professional who works in the area. The imposition of the privatization of medicine, however, is political because the impetus for it comes exclusively from Government.
Whether RTE made the decision on their own, or at the behest of a Government minister is not the point. By making the decision RTE has allowed the government to control how the debate is being framed. By pulling Crown from the Late Late Show they have, using the balance argument, suggested that Crowns opinions are political, and therefore of equal merit to the Government parties opinions. It treats them like debating points – the old ‘there’s two sides to every story’ argument.
In trying to maintain political balance they undermined factual balance. In fact they considered factual balance and political balance to be the same.
Allowing one party to control the terms of debate is as form of censorship, as I’ve argued before and which is being discussed over at Cedar Lounge Revolution in relation to the treatment of the Coolacrease story in a recent Hidden History documentary on RTE.
In my post I mention how there is an attempt to control the debate over Israel by castigating as extremist certain commentator’s opinion that happens to agree with an international consensus about how the Israel/Palestinian situation should be resolved. They do this in order to push out this consensus opinion and so redefine the debate in a way that suits their own ends.
In the case of Coolacrease documentary you have a known agitator against Sinn Fein, a prominent columnist in a national newspaper, and a Senator to boot, if not orchestrating, certainly influencing the political message that the documentary was trying to promote, and being aided and abetted in this endevour by an Op-ed columnist in another national newspaper.
By the way, in case you’re wondering what the image is above, it from a June 2006 powerpoint presentation I found today on the Web put together by the head of factual programming in RTE, Kevin Dawson. It provides an interesting breakdown of how RTE approaches factual programming in general. The slide shown is from the one on Hidden History.
I’ve no idea what the ‘Superquinn’ factor is, but I’ve a funny feeling its nothing to do with historical accuracy.
By the way, Conor worked on the Hidden History documentary on William Martin Murphy, which is to be aired tonight on RTE at 10:15. So no slighting comments about the lack of historical accuracy of this Hidden History or they’ll have to be censored 
That’s a brilliant find, Donagh, the “Superquinn” slide. And I think you’re right it’s probably less rather than more complex…
Damn it, now I’ll have to watch Hidden History again… gah!
I can reveal that tonight’s programme (13 Nov) will prove that Eoghan Harris was shot in the balls by William Martin Murphy, and I’m willing to go on Joe Duffy’s radio show to shout about it, and thereafter hang up on the Murphy apologists.
For now I’m going with, as you put it, the “mess of incompetence, complacency, fear and self censorship” explanation.
Why can RTÉ not make this right by - in the near future - asking Crown to appear opposite, say Brendan Drumm if you want to go the factual route, or a government minister, preferably Harney, if you want the political angle?
Perhaps if they were to do this it would be an admission that they got it badly wrong orginally.
Thanks WorldbyStorm, although it was Conor who spotted the slide. There’s actually two presentations on the web. When you search for ‘Kevin Dawson’ one comes up, and when you search for ‘Kevin Dawson RTE’ another one comes up – I’ve no idea why. The presentation with the superquinn slide was in the one I sent to Conor, but not in the one I was looking at – which lead to all sorts of hilarious confusion.
Yea, Conor, it was funny watching the grainy film footage of Murphy aiming the tip of the ornate musket which he’d been given by the British Viceroy of India, after winning a contract to build a railway in India, at the crotch of Harris. Two of Murphy’s henchmen with enormous moustaches and twitching black-rimmed eyes held the squirming former WP man fast and suddenly the film crackled and there was a plume of smoke at the end of the gun……Oh wait, that wasn’t the documentary, that must have been a dream I had last night.
The real documentary was very interesting, but I’ll try and write something up on it today.
Tomaltach, I think they might try and capitalize on it through Prime Time, but the audience figures are just not the same. I think the decision was made because of the popularity of the Late Late Show, as it really gets its message into the homes of Irish voters. It was seen that if Crown appeared on the Late Late Show without a government minister to counteract his arguments then the Government would completely loose the argument with the Irish public – and with it its attempt to bring in more privatization in Health care. They chose not to appear because they knew that they’d be on weak ground anyway. The political decision was made, whether by RTE itself, or due to pressure, because of the power of the Late Late Show to form opinions. Now we know that the LLS is very conservative, why else have Waters and Harris on before the election. The opinions they want to put out are very much in line with the governments, so there was perhaps no pressure was needed.
They chose not to appear because they knew that they’d be on weak ground anyway.
Right. I think the government have already lost the argument about private health care. I think the majority of people are opposed to the proliferation of private hospitals on public sites. But probably most people feel it is going to go ahead anyway regardless. Plus, because the public health service is such a mess and hasn’t got people’s confidence, there’s probably an attitude that runs along the lines “well, I’m kind of opposed to private hospitals in principle, and they will eventually undermine the public system, but the public system is crap anyway so what the heck”.
The British have their NHS which served them very well in the past (and still does despite recent difficulties and increased expectations etc). Because they know the public system can work wel and can be fair, they have a greater reluctance to let it go. Our health service doesn’t hold the same regard in the public mind.
And despite the health issue moving to the centre of public debate now, it was never a big issue for the electorate when chosing the government.
It’s probably true as well that because the health system is so big and so complex, and the issues around private hospitals so poorly explained people find it hard to unravel the various strands in order to make a firm decision. Who among joe public for example knows how many private hospitals there are now, how many are planned for 2015, or what percentage of treatment they make up or the extent of the financial incentives being provided.
And despite the health issue moving to the centre of public debate now, it was never a big issue for the electorate when chosing the government.
I think you’re right about that. All though there is a lot of heat in the discussion at the moment, mainly because of the cancer scandal.
But generally most people don’t think about the quality of the health system when casting their votes. Its usually only the concern of older members of the electorate. However, the cancer scandal brought it to a different level and showed how it affected individuals in a very unfair way.
And also illustrated how there is a willingness within government to let a system deteriorate in order to prove that another system is necessary.
[…] however, the full meaning of what is being suggested is left to the imagination. For example, yesterday I showed the slide which referred to the ‘Superquinn factor’ of the Hidden History. Having […]