Sir, - When The Irish Times more than once in a week reports that Tom Savage and Terry Prone have been hired by Radio Ireland - although Tom Savage alone is contracted by that company - we let it pass. After all, what's an unchecked inaccuracy between friends?
When The Irish Times asks in print if this will mean the politicians appearing on that station will get the questions in advance we will not let that slur on our individual and corporate standards pass.
A straight question to any of the politicians we have trained from the Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Progressive Democrat, Labour and Green parties would have prevented this gratuitous and damaging error. Each and every one of them would confirm that their training included a specific instruction never to ask for the questions in advance. A straight question to us would have produced the same information. Indeed, if The Irish Times referred to our textbook on public speaking, Just a Few Words, published more than a decade ago but still in print, they'd have found this advice on page 94:
"Any fool can think up a good question - it takes a great interviewer to think up a good supplementary and ask it at the right time. So don't waste your energies asking for a list of questions. You shouldn't want one. They shouldn't give you one. And if they do, the interviewer shouldn't stick to it, because if that's the way interviews happen on television, it's a ready up which puts the ordinary licence paying viewer at a disadvantage."
That's still our standard advice. -Yours, etc.,
Carr Communications, Dundrum,
Co Dublin.