For RTÉ, the word crisis is never too far away. Over more than a decade, it has been sprinkled liberally across internal staff memos, public statements, addresses to Oireachtas committees, consultants’ reports and evidence to statutory commissions.
Add to this the usual run-of-the-mill crises that go along with running any national broadcaster: the spats, the complaints, the disappointments. RTÉ had a medium-to-large one of these earlier this year when its highest-paid presenter announced he would be departing from The Late Late Show, its flagship TV show.
The interregnum between Ryan Tubridy’s announcement and the unveiling of his successor, Patrick Kielty, was not a comfortable one for RTÉ, with various supposed front-runners publicly ruling themselves out. So it must have been a relief for management when that box was ticked and Tubridy departed the Late Late on a general wave of goodwill and warmth.
But Thursday’s revelation that the broadcaster consistently underreported the earnings received by the presenter is deeply shocking and damaging, for RTÉ and Tubridy alike. That’s partly because it’s so simple to understand: additional money was being funnelled via a “barter account” at a time when pay reductions were being demanded of other, less well-paid staff and contractors in RTÉ – and in enterprises across the country.
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These additional payments were withheld from the statement of earnings of highly-paid presenters that RTÉ has been required to publish for about 15 years now (after years of refusing to do so, citing “commercial sensitivity”).
When you talk to RTÉ insiders, they often roll their eyes at what they see as an unhealthy fascination among politicians, the media and the public with these fees, which you will be told are an irrelevance, a mere drop in the financial bucket compared to the bigger challenges which the national broadcaster faces.
But what RTÉ now admits was a serious breach of trust happened at a moment when surveys across the world show a continuing decline in public trust in media. The most recent Reuters Digital News Report indicates that the decline is less precipitous in Ireland than elsewhere, but frittering that goodwill away with this sort of behaviour is a disgrace.
RTÉ is never shy about self-congratulation, but it was able to claim with some justification that it had a good pandemic, keeping the Irish people well-informed and playing a vital role in maintaining social solidarity at a time of unprecedented difficulty and distress. It’s hard not to see that record as tarnished by the revelation of these highly unusual financial arrangements.
For the incoming regime of director general Kevin Bakhurst and chair of the RTÉ Board Siún Ní Raghallaigh, this is a terrible start for which they won’t thank their predecessors, Dee Forbes and Moya Doherty, on whose watch this all occurred.
Forbes and Doherty spent their entire terms lobbying for structural changes to the way public service broadcasting is funded in Ireland. Their frustration was clear at the failure of successive governments to take action or take the issue seriously. Good luck to Bakhurst and Ní Raghallaigh when they go back to make the same arguments to the same deaf ears, with the same predictable results but probably with extra snorts of derision.
When the justified anger over this episode dies down though, Bakhurst and Ní Raghallaigh must still confront the same three interlinked threats, each one of them existential in its own way.
There’s the steady decline in commercial revenue, as advertisers forsake traditional media in favour of the digital alternatives; there’s the refusal by successive governments to reform or replace the licence fee model, which has left public funding lagging well behind inflation; and there’s the as yet unanswered big question: what exactly is a public service broadcaster conceived in the era of analogue TV and radio supposed to become in the age of on-demand and streaming?
Taken together, these threaten to fatally undermine the broadcaster’s claim to speak with authority for and to the nation. Increasingly there are voices arguing that the whole thing is just not fit for purpose. This week, that argument has been made by RTÉ itself.
In a memo to staff almost five years ago, Forbes said RTÉ's financial situation was worse than ever before and that as a result, “it will no longer be possible to continue as we are”. The years since have seen some restructuring and tinkering, but the radical reinvention her statement implied seems no nearer.
At some point, crying wolf and limping along will no longer be an option. This week’s events bring that day of reckoning a little closer.
