THE BROADCASTING Authority of Ireland has upheld a complaint by presidential candidate Seán Gallagher against RTÉ over the broadcast of a tweet that damaged his election campaign.
The authority found in favour of Mr Gallagher in a four-page ruling delivered to the parties yesterday over the tweet read out on The Frontlineprogramme last October.
RTÉ will now have to broadcast an announcement detailing the ruling of the authority shortly. No other sanction is involved.
The decision was made by the authority’s compliance committee, which is chaired by Prof Chris Morash.
The committee found that the broadcast of a tweet incorrectly attributed to the official Martin McGuinness for President twitter account was unfair to Mr Gallagher.
Mr Gallagher, who was the frontrunner in the presidential election at the time of the programme, had claimed a lack of objectivity on the part of RTÉ over the tweet, which was wrongly described as coming from the official Martin McGuinness for President Campaign.
RTÉ had argued that the inclusion of the tweet was legitimate because it later proved to be accurate and because it gave Mr Gallagher and Mr McGuinness the opportunity to verify its content in debate.
Rejecting these arguments, the Broadcasting Authority said they did not validate the inclusion in the programme of unverified information from a source that was wrongly accredited by presenter Pat Kenny.
“In addition, there were no apparent efforts made by the broadcaster to verify the source and accuracy of the content of the tweet at the centre of the complaint,” it added.
The tweet read out by Mr Kenny on the programme on October 24th falsely claimed to be from the campaign team of Mr McGuinness, the Sinn Féin candidate.
Mr Gallagher had pointed out that a tweet from the real McGuinness campaign, which had made it clear that it was not the source of the earlier bogus tweet, was received several minutes later. He claimed no attempt was made to convey this information, even though the second tweet arrived 28 minutes before the end of the programme.
The committee agreed that Mr Kenny did not take the opportunity to verify the content or provenance of the tweet with Mr McGuinness during the debate. It also noted that information was available during the programme that clarified that the tweet account at the centre of the complaint was not from an official Sinn Féin twitter account.
The failure to provide clarification on the provenance of the tweet was unfair to the complainant, it said.
In the absence of any meaningful verification, RTÉ had no way of knowing that the content of the tweet was correct at the time of broadcast.
The committee said the Today with Pat Kennyradio show broadcast the following day, on which Mr Gallagher appeared, exacerbated the unfairness of the Frontlinedebate by failing to include any clarification regarding the tweet.
However, the committee said there was no evidence that RTÉ, Frontlineor Mr Kenny deliberately concealed information about the tweets, as Mr Gallagher had alleged, and there was no evidence for questioning their bona fides.
It was critical of leaks of material relating to the complaint in recent months, saying they demonstrated a lack of respect for the integrity of the complaints process.
In upholding the complaint, the committee said it took into account the fact that the programme was a presidential debate and that Mr Gallagher’s relationship with Fianna Fáil was a legitimate focus for the programme.