Government must look beyond PR world for RTÉ role

Who will be the next chair of the RTÉ board? The appointment will be one of the first tasks to fall to ex-RTÉ radio producer Alex White, the new Minister for Communications.

The term of current chairman Tom Savage, a former broadcaster and the director of PR firm the Communications Clinic, and six other board members is due to expire on August 31st. But the identity of Savage's successor in particular will say a lot about how much the Coalition respects the status of the broadcaster.

The smart money is naturally on an inner-circle grandee, someone who is on the verge of retirement from their day job, or someone who has just retired, perhaps.

Bill “I couldn’t imagine myself doing nothing” O’Herlihy, another PR man, is presumably not in contention on the basis that he was last year appointed chairman of the Irish Film Board, though an O’Herlihy-esque broadcasting “face” would not be a surprise. In an ideal world, however, the next RTÉ board chairman would not be a total industry insider, and especially not a public relations professional.

Odd role

This is partly because of the strange nature of the job. Technically, the chairman of the RTÉ board is not really the chairman of RTÉ, but the chairman of its “governing authority”. It is an odd role, not unlike the vacant chairmanship of the BBC Trust, in that he or she is responsible for the corporate governance and business conduct of RTÉ, but is also obliged in times of scandal to speak on its behalf.

This happened to ex-BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten during the controversy over Newsnight's failure to broadcast its own investigation into Jimmy Savile. Patten, now retired on health grounds, alternated from sounding tough on the management failures of BBC executives and going out to bat for them.

The tension also surfaced in RTÉ in the aftermath of the A Mission to Prey affair. Was it the task of the RTÉ board to investigate the series of events that led up to the Prime Time Investigates libel of Fr Kevin Reynolds, or was its purpose to douse the flames, or somehow to do both?

In any case, the perception of what the chairman of the RTÉ board is supposed to do was unnecessarily complicated by Savage's ownership of the Communications Clinic. In July 2012, the RTÉ board chairman was forced to tell then minister for communications Pat Rabbitte that he was completely unaware of advice given to Reynolds by his wife and Communications Clinic partner, Terry Prone, in the wake of the programme's transmission.

Labour senator John Whelan, a former newspaper editor, called on Rabbitte to act following the disclosure about Prone's role, describing it as a "glaring and irrefutable conflict of interest".

Savage had earlier denied any conflict of interest to an Oireachtas committee hearing. "That is impugning my reputation. It has never happened and will never happen," he told TDs and Senators who suggested there was a de facto conflict of interest between the public service news- gathering remit of RTÉ and his public relations and political coaching role.

Perceived conflicts of interest

His definition of conflict of interest seemed to be one that only exists when it is acted upon. But conflicts of interest only have to be perceived by others to be, as Whelan put it, “a problem waiting to happen”. In other words, the conflict of interest arises before the tea trolley is even wheeled into the boardroom.

The board of RTÉ used to be known as the RTÉ authority, which was a lot less confusing, as the organisation also has an “executive board” comprising the nine people who actually run the show. This executive board could arguably benefit from having a communications or marketing specialist in its ranks.

But for the role of RTÉ board chairman, the Government should look to somebody without active business interests of the PR variety. The former minister said as much in the wake of Whelan’s criticism of Savage, noting that the last three chairs of RTÉ board/authority had been drawn “from the PR community, and I’m not so sure that that’s a good idea”.

Indeed, one of the three – PR agency founder turned sports industry adviser Fintan Drury – tendered his resignation in 2007 after a conflict of interest arose between the RTÉ role and his day job.

“Perhaps the very nature of the business and the nature of RTÉ will give rise to this kind of fear,” Rabbitte observed.

The new Minister, a former RTÉ radio producer, must surely agree and opt for a man or woman whose primary experience lies not in public relations, or even broadcasting, but in corporate governance.