Oireachtas

Setting the record straight is not a bogus issue

PETER FEENEY, RTÉ’s head of broadcast compliance, dashed off a lengthy letter to Sir following our report last month that Morgan…

Sat Mar 10 2012 - 00:00

PETER FEENEY, RTÉ’s head of broadcast compliance, dashed off a lengthy letter to Sir following our report last month that Morgan Fuels received payments of €3,000 from the Martin McGuinness-for-president campaign.

He was annoyed by a line in the piece referring to the now infamous tweet that Pat Kenny (below) read aloud to presidential candidate Seán Gallagher during the live Frontlinedebate. We reported that Pat referred on the night to "what turned out to be a bogus tweet". Not so, apparently.

Here's the head of compliance: "RTÉ would like to set the record straight: the presenter did not read out any bogus tweet on the programme." He explains: "The term bogus can only refer accurately to the provenance of the tweet. The information contained in the tweet was essentially accurate: Sinn Féin the next day identified Hugh Morgan as the businessman who was claiming that Seán Gallagher had solicited a donation of €5,000 for Fianna Fáil in 2008. As you may be aware, there were two near-identical Twitter accounts purporting to be Martin McGuinness-for-president accounts. The tweet that was referred to on The Frontlineprogramme came from what we now know was the 'unofficial' account which had been registered on the same day as the official account, and had been active since its registration."

He then said RTÉ would not be commenting further until the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland had completed its deliberations.

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“However, this is a disputed matter, and it is important that your reporting of it is fully fair and accurate,” he concluded.

Then the authority issued its findings. Now, RTÉ Newsseems to be routinely referring to "the bogus tweet". Bryan Dobson used the term in his interview with Noel Curran on Wednesday night (and the RTÉ director general didn't pick him up on it), and he was at it again in his script on Thursday's teatime news.

The anchorman wasn’t quoting anybody; he just referred to it in a factual way as “the bogus tweet”.

We presume Peter will be sending around a stiff letter to the RTÉ newsroom “to set the record straight”.