A SPECIAL meeting of the RTÉ board is to take place tomorrow after the broadcasting watchdog upheld Seán Gallagher’s complaint about unfairness in the final televised presidential election debate last year.
The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland said the station had made "no apparent efforts" to verify the source and accuracy of a tweet broadcast during The Frontlineprogramme.
The tweet, incorrectly described by presenter Pat Kenny as having been issued by the official Martin McGuinness campaign, put Mr Gallagher under increased pressure to explain his past links to Fianna Fáil.
The Louth businessman, who had gone into the debate a clear leader in the presidential election opinion polls but ended up finishing second to Michael D Higgins, has not ruled out taking legal action against RTÉ.
“That’s a decision for another day,” he said yesterday, after welcoming the authority’s finding.
Mr Gallagher said he was in no way seeking to overturn the result of the election, pointing out he had wished Mr Higgins well on his election last November.
RTÉ chairman Tom Savage said he accepted the authority’s decision, which merited close attention. The State broadcaster’s board would meet for that purpose tomorrow. “We will deliberate on the findings and discuss the matter in full.”
Journalistic standards at the station are expected to come under further scrutiny shortly when the authority’s report into the Mission to Prey programme on Prime Time Investigates is completed. RTÉ could be fined up to €250,000 over mistakes in the programme, which wrongly accused a missionary of fathering a child in Africa.
RTÉ director general Noel Curran apologised to Mr Gallagher for the mistakes made in The Frontlineprogramme but refused to countenance an inquiry into the affair. "We have been found against and we have to learn from that," said Mr Curran, who insisted there was "no question" of RTÉ having approached the debate between the presidential candidates "with agendas".
RTÉ will now have to broadcast an announcement detailing the authority’s decision on the bogus tweet.
The revelation of the tweet, during a highly-charged final debate in the presidential election campaign, was seen as pivotal to the subsequent slump in Mr Gallagher’s popularity.
At an early stage in the debate, Mr McGuinness alleged that Mr Gallagher had called to the house of a businessman to collect a €5,000 cheque for Fianna Fáil, and the tweet stated: “The man that Gallagher took the cheque from will be at a press conference tomorrow.”
The authority’s decision criticised the use of unverified information from a source that was wrongly accredited by presenter Pat Kenny.
Although Mr McGuinness’s real campaign account on Twitter issued a corrective tweet with almost 30 minutes of the programme to run, this information was not passed on to viewers, nor to listeners of Kenny’s radio show the next morning.
The authority said the radio show exacerbated the unfairness of the Frontlinedebate by failing to clarify the tweet. There was no evidence that RTÉ, The Frontlineor Kenny deliberately concealed information about the tweets and no evidence for questioning their bona fides.
Kenny last night declined to comment on the finding, saying he was happy for the director general to speak for the station.
Mr Curran admitted the veracity of the first tweet read out by Kenny should have been checked, while a second, corrective tweet from the Sinn Féin campaign should have been mentioned.
He blamed the two mistakes on “a breakdown in communications in a very busy production box”. RTÉ’s guidelines for dealing with social media were being updated, he said.
Mr Gallagher said the ruling confirmed his view that there was an institutional failure by RTÉ. The station’s desire to “manufacture on-air drama won out over the truth” as it abandoned its own reporting guidelines, he said in a statement.
“This public service broadcaster introduced, in a grossly unfair manner, a controversial and bogus tweet into a crucial and live presidential election debate, just days before polling, without first having verified where it came from, and whether it was in fact genuine,” he stated.