Politicians ‘concerned’ about RTÉ news chief’s deleted ‘pro-Varadkar’ tweet

POLITICIANS have raised concerns about the impartiality of RTÉ’s coverage of the Fine Gael leadership campaign after managing director of news Jon Williams appeared to back frontrunner Leo Varadkar.

Mr Williams had to delete a comment he posted on social media which appeared to be supportive of Mr Varadkar.

“With Leo Varadkar as gay Taoiseach symbolizes Ireland’s transformation,” he wrote.

The tweet was posted with a link to an article which said Mr Varadkar was closing in on victory. However, it was deleted some time later, with RTÉ insisting Mr Williams made the decision to remove it himself.

Last night, Fine Gael TD Kate O’Connell (top right), who has backed Simon Coveney for the leadership, said the tweet had been “ill judged”. “It seems very strange and I do wonder how it could have happened,” she said.

“It wasn’t appropriate but I think it must come down to human error. The fact that it was deleted indicates he was aware of the error.”

Labour senator Kevin Humphreys said Mr Williams’s comments online raised serious concerns about whether RTÉ’s leadership coverage will remain non-biased.

“I think it is a cause of great concern,” Mr Humphreys said.

RTÉ is legally obliged to be impartial in political matters and has strict social media guidelines in place. These guidelines say the core guiding principle is “fairness and impartiality”.

The social media rules were implemented in 2013, and updated in 2015 ahead of the same-sex marriage referendum. In the run-up to the referendum, RTÉ warned staff not to publicly express any personal views, be it in the form of social media banners, Twitter avatars, watermarks, or retweets. “The fact that the head of news couldn’t abide to the rules is troubling,” Mr Humphreys said. “I think the Director General should come forward and issue a clarification – RTÉ has to be held to higher standards than this.” A spokeswoman for RTÉ said the decision to delete the tweet was made entirely by Mr Williams (pictured bottom left). She said he had retweeted a link to the article and said he often did this.

He was just summing up the content of the piece in his post, she said.

The spokeswoman said that after reading it again following the post, he decided to delete it. She said the word “coronation” appeared in the piece Mr Williams had linked to.

However, sources have confirmed that RTÉ staff were perplexed by his actions. “It shows a naivety,” a source said.

“Everyone in RTÉ has to be extremely cautious about what they share online.

“The tweet shows a lack of judgment.”

Yesterday, former news reader Anne Doyle, who worked in the current affairs department for 30 years, said it was not appropriate for employees to air their views in public.

“Obviously in private you can have opinions, but you can hardly turn around and say ‘Ah Jaysus Leo, I think I’ll go for Simon’,” she told the Irish Independent.

Asked if she felt constrained when working within RTÉ guidelines, she said: “I suppose there might have been moments occasionally where you had very strong feelings about somebody but you would be out of a job if you aired those freely.

“So that tends to moderate opinions.”

Responding to criticism of Mr Williams’s tweet, she said: “He’s the head of news so, yes, I can understand why it was deleted.”