Kevin Bakhurst’s arrival gives RTÉ a much-needed leader

This is not the first time Kevin Bakhurst has been tasked with cleaning up a mess in RTÉ.

In 2012, Bakhurst arrived from a successful career in BBC News to take on the role of head of news and current affairs following the double debacle of the Mission to Prey programme, which led to substantial damages and an apology to Fr Kevin Reynolds, and the 2011 presidential debate, during which an unverified accusation against one candidate via Twitter was aired without due diligence.

It is generally accepted both inside and outside the organisation that Bakhurst did an excellent job of steadying the news and current affairs division and restoring confidence and standards. That was reflected in his elevation to the position of assistant director general in 2015 by then director general Noel Curran.

On Thursday, Bakhurst and Curran will sit together in front of the Oireachtas Media Committee as it continues its investigations into what the new director general in his 7am email to staff on Monday described as “shameful events”.

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That email set out the immediate steps being taken to begin what will be a long and tortuous process of regaining trust with the Government, the public and with RTÉ's own staff. The most dramatic of these, albeit already well-flagged, is the immediate dissolution of the “executive board”, RTÉ's unusual and rather misleading name for what in most organisations would be called the senior management team.

[ RTÉ pay crisis: Decision has to be made on Ryan Tubridy’s future ‘soon’ - Kevin Bakhurst ]

[ Kevin Bakhurst’s first week: What’s in store for new RTÉ director general amid ‘existential’ crisis ]

Bakhurst’s new interim leadership team includes five members of the old executive board but, as he pointed out in a subsequent interview, 50 per cent of its members will be new additions. If you include former director Dee Forbes, five of the old editorial board are not among the new team. Head of strategy Rory Coveney resigned at the weekend, while head of commercial Geraldine O’Leary took early retirement with immediate effect on Monday. Neither former chief financial officer Richard Collins or head of content Jim Jennings has been appointed to the new group.

In a further significant change, the salaries of all members of the senior management team will be published as part of RTÉ's annual report. Previous assertions that such information could not be divulged due to concerns over data privacy seem suddenly to have been surmounted.

Similar claims that “commercial sensitivities” made it impossible to give a full account of expenditure on initiatives such as the ill-fated Toy Show: The Musical have also been abandoned. That previous mix of secretiveness and hubris was at the heart of the as yet ill-defined RTÉ “culture” blamed by many for the unacceptable actions which have now been uncovered.

It will take several months before the various inquiries into governance and accountability at RTÉ are concluded, but Bakhurst has moved swiftly in putting better controls in place to eliminate what he calls “siloed and at times secretive decision-making”.

“From today, all significant decisions will be agreed by the whole of the interim leadership team and a record of discussions leading to these decisions will be compiled,” he wrote in his email.

It seems remarkable that this was not already the case. But it also seems extraordinary that it has taken so long for the newly announced register of interests to be put in place.

How Toy Show: The Musical went wrong for RTÉ

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Of the many cans of worms opened up by the revelation of concealment of Ryan Tubridy’s true pay, the lackadaisical attitude to potential conflicts of interest among staff and contractors is particularly glaring. What was management thinking that they did not recognise how essential such a register is in the modern era of influencers, brand ambassadors and the blurring of lines between editorial and commercial?

The picture that is emerging from the revelations of the past three weeks is of an organisation which badly lost its bearings in navigating the always tricky relationship between its public service remit and its commercial objectives.

[ Rory Coveney steps down from role to make way for ‘fresh lead team’ in RTÉ ]

When Bakhurst lost out to Forbes in the contest to succeed Curran as director general in 2016, the decision was widely seen as a vote for the outsider with commercial nous who could shake up RTÉ and render it fit for purpose in an increasingly difficult media marketplace. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way.

Now Bakhurst, a public service broadcasting lifer (with the exception of a spell at UK media regulator Ofcom) is back to reassert core values and principles that RTÉ claims to uphold but which have not been much in evidence lately.

He seems well-equipped for the task, although one wonders now about the unprecedented conflicts which were reported within the RTÉ authority (the broadcaster’s “real” board) earlier this year over the process that led to his appointment.

On Monday, he did enough to start the long road to recovery with his email to staff. His statements to media have been similarly clear but also circumspect. He seems sanguine – or even drily unimpressed – at the prospect of losing Tubridy to a UK broadcaster.

At Thursday’s committee he will need to put some more flesh on the bones of his plans. “RTÉ needs to quickly and meaningfully evolve into an organisation that is focused on its people and the public we serve,” he told staff.

But what exactly does that mean? And how does it fit with the much broader, inescapable questions about how to define, fund and run public service media in the post-analogue world?

At least, many in RTÉ will feel, they finally have a leader, something that has been glaringly lacking over the last three weeks.