Broadcasting watchdog partially upholds complaint against RTÉ

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has partially upheld a complaint by two European election candidates about an RTÉ news report on opinion poll findings.

MEP Paul Murphy and Councillor Bríd Smith, both of whom are running for election in the Dublin European Parliament constituency, complained that the coverage of a Sunday Business Post/Red C opinion poll on the 9pm news on May 3rd failed to be fair, objective and impartial.

The authority’s ruling was issued late last night.

Solicitors on behalf of the Socialist Party MEP, Ms Smith and Patricia McKenna, complained that RTÉ had only highlighted candidates with over 10 per cent support in the polls.

They stated this led to the exclusion of both Ms Smith, with 9 per cent, and Mr Murphy, with 7 per cent.

The complainants said it was their view that “selective reporting” on the opinion poll and other election coverage “sends a message to the electorate about which candidates are the real contenders for election and which are not”.

They firmly believed that “opinion polls are not always correct and RTÉ acted in breach of its statutory duty by adopting what the complainants state was an arbitrary process in reporting on opinion poll data”.

In its own response to the BAI complaint, RTÉ said it did not consider it was required to recite every result shown by the poll and that it was entitled to report on who was shown to be leading.

The broadcaster said that for this reason, the element of the report on the Dublin constituency indicated that Minister of State Brian Hayes for Fine Gael was in front at 18 per cent and that it then outlined that a number of candidates were "closely bunched together".

RTÉ said it was not irrational, in a 30-second summary, to identify the candidates that the poll showed to be leading and to confine the report to the top six in a three-seat constituency.

It did not consider that the fact reference was not made to every candidate served to damage the credibility of those candidates. There was no “arbitrary decision”, as claimed by one of the complainants, to exclude the complainant or any other candidate.

RTÉ said it had taken a “consistent and objective editorial approach to reporting of the poll”.

In its decision, the BAI compliance committee said it did not agree with the complainants that the approach to the reporting of the poll was undertaken on the basis of an aribitrary 10 per cent cut-off in terms of poll results.

In addition, it agreed with RTÉ that coverage of every element of the poll was not an obligation in principle to ensure compliance with the impartiality requirement.

But it did find that the exclusion of poll results in respect of Ms Smith and Mr Murphy was unfair to these two candidates in circumstances where similar results in respect of the Midlands North-West constituency were included.

The committee also found the context for RTÉ’s analysis of the results of the poll was “insufficiently transparent for viewers”, contrary to the requirement of its guidelines on local and European election coverage.

It found “no evidence” that the approach taken to the report was an attempt to influence public opinion in respect of the two candidates, or that the approach taken to the report lacked impartiality or objecivity in terms of its news content.

The complainants welcomed the findings.