ON HIS final broadcast on Today FM yesterday journalist Sam Smyth promised to continue highlighting what he described as “important principles” surrounding media ownership in Ireland but said he would not use the show as a “soapbox to air personal grievances” with station owner Denis O’Brien.
Smyth’s last show was broadcast from New York and in his closing remarks he said that on the last occasion he had hosted the show from the city a year ago, he had received an e-mail from a senior executive at the station praising the show.
“After the New York show last year, the powers-that-be in the station, in Today FM, sent me a message and I’ll quote from it now. It says: ‘Great show, Mt Rushmore of broadcasting. Congrats.’ That was only 51 weeks ago.”
The decision to cut Smyth’s Sunday programme has been widely viewed as resulting from his long-running critical reporting of Today FM owner Denis O’Brien in relation to the Moriarty tribunal and its findings.
Mr O'Brien is pursuing legal action against the journalist over comments he made on the TV3 show Tonight with Vincent Browneand in an article in the Irish Independent.
The National Union of Journalists criticised the decision to remove Smyth from Today FM, saying it raised questions about the editorial independence of the station.
The station insisted Mr O’Brien had no role in the decision and cited declining listenership figures for the decision.
Recent JNLR figures show the number of listeners to Sam Smyth on Sunday had fallen from 106,000 to 92,000 over the past year.
Smyth said yesterday the controversy over the station’s decision to drop him after 14 years was “about much more than my personal loss – it is about the public interest”.
He said he had avoided using the programme over recent weeks “as a soapbox to air personal grievances with the owners and management at Today FM” but said that did “not mean I will not be using other public platforms to pursue what I believe at least are important principles about the public interest particularly in my own trade, which is journalism, and who owns the media”.
His departure comes a week after Eamon Dunphy left Newstalk, another station owned by Mr O’Brien’s Communicorp group.
While Smyth was temperate and circumspect in his last broadcast, Dunphy was more vocal and on his last show he accused Mr O’Brien of “hating journalism”.
Following the remarks, the broadcaster was threatened with legal action by Mr O’Brien’s legal representatives. In a legal letter delivered to Dunphy’s home last week, they demanded an apology, a retraction and compensation.
Mr Dunphy could not be contacted for comment yesterday.
