Investigative current affairs to return but RTÉ faces pressures

MEDIA CONFERENCE:RTÉ'S INVESTIGATIVE current affairs programmes will be back on air "big time" within a few months, but the broadcaster's journalism continues to face financial pressures, warned managing director of RTÉ News and Current Affairs Kevin Bakhurst.

In his first public address since joining RTÉ from the BBC in September, Mr Bakhurst yesterday told the Cleraun Media Conference in Dublin that despite the “partial shield” of public funding, RTÉ had to contend with “an 800lb gorilla” in the shape of BSkyB.

“Sky is sucking money out of the marketplace,” he said.

Mr Bakhurst confirmed that RTÉ will review the impact that the closure of its London bureau has had on its coverage and will look at whether the practice of sending reporters to and from Britain to cover stories such as that of the missing Welsh child April Jones was “the most efficient way of doing it”.

The former controller of the BBC News channel said he had made it clear when he took the RTÉ job that it “absolutely should be in the game” when it comes to foreign news, but he cautioned that such coverage could be “highly expensive”.

He added that he would have preferred if experienced news staff who accepted voluntary redundancy or early retirement offers had stayed, but “RTÉ needed the money”.

He also ruled out the possibility of launching a breakfast television show. “Breakfast television isn’t cheap . . . it costs money,” he said. However, RTÉ plans to develop the RTÉ News Now channel, “and that might include beefing up some of the earlier coverage”.

Mr Bakhurst said it was important for the broadcaster to get investigative journalism back on screen following the hiatus that resulted from the A Mission to Prey libel, which led to the axing of the Prime Time Investigates series earlier this year.

“We still maintain a level of trust that many other media organisations would envy,” he said. “However, we do have to acknowledge our journalism costs money to deliver.”

When it comes to the future shape of RTÉ, “a lot depends” on commercial revenue trends: “RTÉ has made a commitment to break even next year. It’s no secret, and TV3 has said the same, that commercial income is down badly.”

The conference is held at Cleraun’s university centre near UCD, where spiritual guidance is provided by the Catholic institution Opus Dei.

National Union of Journalists’ Irish secretary Séamus Dooley said the “appalling” treatment of Irish Sun staff demonstrated that Rupert Murdoch had failed to learn the lessons of the Leveson inquiry into UK press standards.

Six employees of the Irish Sun based in its newsroom have been told they will be made redundant following editor Mick McNiffe’s exit and a decision by News International to implement changes described as bringing “more of the DNA that lies at the heart of the Sun into the Irish edition”.

Mr Dooley said he had “experienced directly the fear felt by News International staff deemed to lack what was called the Sun DNA” and said they were being denied the right to collective representation.