European Commissioner for Financial Services, Financial Stability and Capital Markets Union, Mairead McGuinness has called on RTÉ to “stop ducking” on the issue of the Ryan Tubridy pay deal.
Commissioner McGuinness, who worked as a journalist with RTÉ for years, said the problem now was that no one knew what was going on. “I think that's the problem. There isn’t clarity. I came here (RTÉ) first in 1980, so I'm an old soldier.
"But the five W's – who, what, why, where and when. And I think of those and why is really important and who. RTÉ shouldn't be the story. But it is. And it's not only the story, it’s the top story.
“Everybody is wondering what happened, Why did this happen? How did it happen? So whatever comes of today's engagement with the Oireachtas has to be clearer than yesterday, because there's been a lot of failures.
“I'm responsible for financial issues. And we know what happened when people lost faith or trust in the banks. They're still trying to rebuild our trust. And I think there will be the same problem for RTÉ to just rebuild trust with its audience because RTÉ is unique.
“We have other broadcasters that we can get information and programming from, but RTÉ is the one that gets the license fee. It's a public service broadcaster. I was very aware of that when I was in RTÉ. Most of my work there was done, not in RTÉ, it was on independent productions like Ear to the Ground, for example.”
Ms McGuinness said she agreed with RTÉ’s NUJ representative journalist Emma O’Kelly who said that “the rot” needed to stop. It had been “pretty tough” to watch seasoned journalists who would not normally be engaged in this type of protest standing out on the RTÉ campus.
“There has to be fundamental change. I think everything has to be in the open, whether that's salaries or connections or people doing events outside of RTÉ because of the unique position that RTÉ holds."
Resources needed to be made available for journalists to investigate stories as wider society needed to know it could trust the source of its news especially at a time when there were concerns about misinformation and disinformation.
“Everybody’s hurting about this.”
RTÉ at board and management levels needed to think long and hard about how they serve the public and how they were going to restore trust, she said.
