Tag Archives: RTE

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After last week’s kerfuffle on the still-potential outsourcing of young people’s programming, RTÉ have announced a further step into the Irish music scene, getting behind the annual Choice Music Prize.

RTÉ director-general Dee Forbes says:

Supporting Irish music and Irish musicians is a core part of what RTÉ does and this partnership will allow us to take our support one step further. Through RTÉ2 and RTÉ2FM, two established brands with a long and rich history in supporting Irish music, and through our popular online and mobile platforms, RTÉ will put the RTÉ Choice Music Prize at the centre of a campaign that will bring the best Irish artists and songs from the past year to a wider audience.

The shortlist for this year’s album prize will announced on Wednesday 11th January, 2017, with the winner announced on Thursday 9th March 2017. The awards will be broadcast live on 2FM and presented in extended-highlight form the following week on RTÉ2.

RTÉ Choice Music Prize

Previously: This Dustin

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FIGHT!

Could Fair City be next for axe as RTÉ looks at all areas in cost-cutting drive? (iIndependent,ie)

Meanwhile…

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Mary Fitzgerald

RTÉ is at it again, selling off the family silver. First the lands around the RTÉ studios in Donnybrook, and now the jewel in the crown, children’s and young people’s television programmes.

As a former RTÉ children’s and young people’s television presenter in the 1980s and 1990s of very successful children’s shows, made in-house by great RTÉ production teams, I am very disappointed and sad to hear the news that RTÉ is outsourcing the making of children’s and young people’s television programmes to independent production companies.

Did anyone ask the children or young people what they think? Probably not. Their voices are always the last to be heard. Once again children’s interest are bottom of the pile, and the accountants win out. A very short-sighted decision.

Mary Fitzgerald

Irish Times Letters

Update….

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Neil writes:

How could you not be entertained by the plight of a guy with a learning disability who was involuntary and unconstitutionally coerced into confessing to assisting in a murder and has been incarcerated since he was a teenager?

US judge orders release of ‘Making a Murderer’s’ Brendan Dassey (RTE)

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For the week that’s in it.

RTÉ Archives have this morning released footage of various US Presidential visits to Ireland throughout the years  and some nifty design work (above).

Writes Áine Kerrigan:

Watch John F. Kennedy and his sisters chat and joke with their Irish relatives and take tea and salmon sandwiches on home-made bread on the ancestral farm in Dunganstown, Co. Wexford in 1963.

In 1970 Richard Nixon visited the Quaker burial ground where his mother’s ancestors were buried and then had a close encounter with an egg thrower on Lord Edward Street in Dublin.

In 1984 Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were entertained by Irish dancers In Ballyporeen and presented with a pictorial record of the town.

Bill and Hillary Clinton took a walk among the throngs in College Green in 1995 and President Clinton pulled a young boy from the crush and Hillary was asked if she has ‘any sisters knocking around’.

Revisit the anti war protests of 2004 against the use of Shannon Airport as a transit stop for US troops heading to Iraq as US President George Bush arrives on Irish soil.

Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle were given a warm welcome on their visit to Moneygall, home of the president’s great great great grandfather in 2011 and they stopped for a quick pint in Ollie Hayes’ pub.

Which should take the edge off this week’s result, either way.

RTÉ Archives

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The cover of the Report on the Concentration of Media Ownership in Ireland and Denis O’Brien

This afternoon.

Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan has published a Report on the Concentration of Media Ownership in Ireland, which she commissioned on behalf of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group of the European Parliament.

It was written by lawyers in Belfast and London.

Ms Boylan’s report follows a report in March – about media plurality and ownership in Ireland by the Centre for Pluralism and Media Freedom, led by Dr Roderick Flynn of Dublin City University.

From the report:

Ireland has one of the most concentrated media markets of any democracy. Accumulation of what has been described as “communicative power” within the news markets is at endemic levels, and this, combined with the dominance of one private individual media owner in the State, creates what the Media Reform Coalition has described as “conditions in which wealthy individuals and organisations can amass huge political and economic power and distort the media landscape to suit their interests and personal views”.

The two most important controlling entities in the Irish media landscape are the national State broadcaster, RTÉ, and an individual businessman, Denis O’Brien…

…First, Mr. O’Brien has initiated a large number of sets of proceedings since 2010, including 12 cases against media organisations in relation to their coverage of his business affairs. Analysis stretching back almost two decades, to 1998, suggests that Mr. O’Brien has regularly made threats of legal action, and instituted legal proceedings, against journalists and media organisations.

Any wealthy individual bringing such a large number of claims seeking to restrict press coverage of their business dealings would raise concerns regarding freedom of expression and the potential for such litigious profligacy to have a ‘chilling effect’ on newsgathering and reporting in the public interest. However, when the wealthy individual in question is also the “largest owner of private media in the State,”  those concerns and risks are substantially increased.

…The Report’s authors are aware of suggestions that there are legal bars to any such action being taken, but we reject any suggestion that it is not legally permissible to address the status quo and that tackling the current concentration of media ownership is impossible given the importance of property rights in the Irish Constitution and/ or the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

On the contrary, our conclusion is that there is, in principle, no such legal bar. A retrospective mechanism could indeed be permissible under the Irish Constitution, EU law, and the ECHR.

…The devil is very much in the detail, and these are difficult issues. What is now needed is a careful review of the detail, and, accordingly, the Report recommends that the Government establish a cross-disciplinary Commission of Inquiry.

Read the report in full here

Rollingnews

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This morning.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan and Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe  leaving RTÉ studios in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, where they appeared on the Seán O’Rourke show (top) for the annual post-budget phone-in.

Meanwhile, Aaron Rogan, in The Times Ireland edition, reports:

RTE confirmed yesterday that Michael Noonan and Paschal Donohoe would be shown listeners’ questions in advance of appearing on this morning’s call-in show on Today with Sean O’Rourke.

Ministers were criticised last year when The Times reported that advisers for Mr Noonan and Brendan Howlin, the then public expenditure minister, were shown questions from the public before their appearance on the programme the day after the budget was unveiled.

A reporter from The Times witnessed conversations between RTE staff and departmental advisers after being shown into the wrong room. The unnoticed reporter watched as an adviser with the Department of Finance warned RTE personnel that the ministers would not do the interview unless the questions were provided.

Good times.

RTE preps ministers on listeners’ questions (The Times, Aaron Rogan)

Previously: A Phoney Phone-In

Rollingnews

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Sinead Cusack and her son Richard Boyd Barrett during Bloomsday 2016

 

On Saturday.

On RTÉ’s Marian Finucane show, Ms Finucane interviewed actress Sinead Cusack who is also People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett’s mother.

After Ms Cusack gave birth to Mr Boyd Barrett in 1967, he was adopted by Valerie and David Boyd Barrett in Dun Laoghaire. Ms Cusack and Mr Boyd Barrett were reunited some years later.

During the interview..

Marian Finucane: “Well, I mean, it’s well known now, that your son is People Before Profit and all of that. And you found him years…”

Sinead Cusack: “My son is not just People Before Profit. My son is Richard.”

Finucane: [laughs] Well, your son, Richard, of People Before Profit is where he would be known mostly by our audience. What age were you when you became pregnant?”

Cusack: “19.”

Listen back in full here

Earlier: Taking The Michael

Top pic: Dara Mac Donaill/The Irish Times

Meanwhile…

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The panel of the Marian Finucane show on September 4: Fianna Fail TD John McGuinness; Suzanne Kelly, a tax lawyer; Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent at The Irish Times; Professor of Modern History  Diarmuid Ferriter; and Senator Michael McDowell

Anthony Sheridan of Public Inquiry writes:

To whom it may concern:

I wish to lodge a formal complaint against RTE for breach of its Public Service Statement 2015.

My complaint centres on the biased panel selection on the Marian Finucane Show as broadcast on Sunday, 4 September last.

Specifically, my complaint concerns the unbalanced and unchallenged views expressed during the discussion surrounding the Apple tax scandal.

The panel members were as follows:

Michael McDowell: Independent Senator and former Tanaiste and Minister for Justice.

Suzanne Kelly: Tax lawyer.

John McGuinness: Fianna Fáil TD

Patsy McGarry: Irish Times Religious Affairs Correspondent.

Diarmuid Ferriter: Professor of Modern History at UCD.

It is reasonable to describe all the panel members and the presenter, Ms Finucane, as individuals with conservative views that are mainly in line with the governing establishment.

It is also reasonable to describe the two politicians on the panel as public representatives with strong and uncompromising views on the political outlook of those who oppose the Government’s response to the Apple tax scandal.

Left wing political parties such as Sinn Fein, Anti-Austerity Alliance, People Before Profit and others who represent a significant percentage of the population were, by their exclusion, prevented from expressing a contrary view.

This is in breach of RTEs Public Service Statement 2015.

I quote:

Ensuring its treatment of current affairs and matters of public controversy, in addition to being impartial and objective, is fair to all interests.

It is also clear that RTE management is very well aware of the major changes taking place within Irish society.

I quote:

RTÉ today sits within a society, economy and media environment that is changing; and changing rapidly. Recent years have shaken public confidence in institutions and traditional authority.

Despite this awareness, or perhaps because of it, RTE management seems to be abandoning its objectivity and professionalism in favour of taking the side of State/Government.

The apparent packing of a discussion panel in favour of one side of the debate is also in breach of RTEs duty in law to be impartial.

I quote:

RTÉ has a duty in law to be accurate, fair and impartial, and to remain independent from all state, political and commercial influences.

Yours sincerely

Anthony Sheridan

Formal complaint against RTE for bias (Public Inquiry)

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Tonight.

Making it Down Under.

On RTE One at 8.30pm.

Gareth Naughton writes:

On tonight’s episode viewers meet Rosie Nolan, a Waterford woman working in the Australian police force who is also a mum of seven.

Rosie (27) travelled to Australia at the age of 18, having had her application to join the Gardaí turned down with the advice to go and get some life experience before trying again later.

She arrived in Australia as a backpacker, eventually joined the Brisbane Police and never looked back. Nine years later, she has seven children and lives happily in the suburbs with her wife Natasha.