The wrong approach at the wrong time

ANALYSIS:"PUBLISH AND be damned" runs one of the oldest sayings of journalism. Unfortunately for RTÉ, it isn't meant to be followed literally, at least not without a healthy dose of fact-checking.

With two investigations now ordered into the mistakes made in the Fr Kevin Reynolds case, a hostile political establishment baying for blood and a public angered by the mega-salaries it pays to leading presenters, the national broadcaster is certainly at a low ebb.

The way out of this morass will come through a complete revelation of the circumstances which led to the mistakes made in the Prime Timeprogramme on Fr Reynolds, and the botched manner in which the legal case that followed was handled.

The station could have lanced the boil months ago, but through its delays and seeming obfuscation RTÉ management only served to make a bad situation worse. Months after the case first hit the news, basic questions about the broadcaster’s approach remain unanswered.

The most obvious one to be addressed by the investigations is why RTÉ did not take up Fr Reynolds’s offer of a paternity test. Could the broadcast of the programme not have been delayed to allow this to take place? What was the legal advice? Was this followed? After the programme was broadcast last May, Fr Reynolds continued to protest his innocence and continued to offer to undertake a test. The investigations are likely to seek to establish why this took so long to take place, and why the station responded so slowly when it turned out to be negative.

In August, the woman at the centre of the allegation wrote saying that Fr Reynolds was not her father, but even after this RTÉ's response was tardy. Fr Reynolds, who was doorstepped with no notice at a Communion service in May, had to wait months for the apology he was due. Another striking feature of the case is that while Fr Reynolds had to stand aside from his priestly duties immediately, Aoife Kavanagh, the reporter in the programme, continued to broadcast in RTÉ. The investigators will have to address wider questions about alleged double standards in relation to what the media expects of its targets and the rules it applies to itself. Even the title of the A Mission to Preyprogramme has prompted allegations of anti-Catholic bias.

Journalism is a collaborative exercise, especially so television. The investigators will look at who was involved in making the key editorial decisions here along with Kavanagh. It may interview the producer Mark Lappin, who has moved to London to work for CNN, executive producer of Prime Time InvestigatesBrian Páircéir, current affairs editor Ken O'Shea and managing director of news Ed Mulhall.

In the normal course of events, all of these figures would have been involved where legal issues arose in relation to a planned programme. And although RTÉ director general Noel Curran said last night he wasn’t involved in the decision-making process before the programme was broadcast, he would certainly have been consulted on the approach taken by the broadcaster in its aftermath. In that context, he too will have questions to answer.

In the current febrile atmosphere, it is easy to overlook the fact that Prime Time Investigateshas done the State some service. Award-winning programmes on the Leas Cross nursing home, mental health, banking policy and drug use have informed and changed public policy in many areas.