Real scrutiny is still needed
Is Stephen Nolan worth £450,000? The BBC seems to think so. However, in an age of public sector austerity, in which workers earning under £30,000 have been told to tighten their belts and buy a few more tins of supermarket brand beans for the children’s supper, why should high-flying BBC presenters be the exception to the rule?
You cannot criticise Stephen Nolan for accepting what he has been offered by the BBC.
The man is clearly a workaholic, doing 9am shows and 10pm shows every day (with a few TV programmes squeezed in for good measure).
However, burning the candle at both ends does not justify his grossly excessive pay packet.
The arguments that have been put forward about “market forces” and competition from the private sector have all been predictably rolled out to defend this excess.
Like it or not, these presenters have to be put in the same frame as our public sector chief executives, MPs and senior civil servants.
Why? Because they are public servants — just like all the rest.
For those of us who have worked in politics, we know only too well the tricks of the trade when it comes to a seasoned performer who wants to avoid being interviewed, or provide an opportunity for a journalist to corner them and get them to slip up and crash live on air: tell the producer you have a meeting to go to at 9.30am, but will go on-air for a short time out of the goodness of your own heart; call into the show that has been hunting you down for the last hour-and-a-half and provide a five-minute monologue before the show is taken over (in the case of the BBC by Sean Coyle or Uncle Hugo).
So, when Nolan refused to be interviewed on Talkback and called into Evening Extra at 6.18pm (during which he acted very aggressively under pressure from Seamus McKee), he reminded me of our most well-seasoned politicians using the same defensive tactics that they had used to avoid him.
His subsequent interview with the TUV leader Jim Allister proved a total damp squib.
The Kells QC landed few blows. To be fair, though, it seemed that he had little notice of his new role and he had no BBC researchers on hand to assist him with putting together a well-informed scrutiny.
The interview was conducted within the framework of the Nolan Show and, while no one should question the integrity of those that work on that team, it was not perceived as being independent.
No one expected to see Allister vs Nolan. Everyone would love to see Nolan vs Crawley, between whom there seems to be little love lost. Talkback, of course, has a team of researchers to prepare for a proper scrutiny and Crawley would have the advantage of having a better sense of the inner workings of the BBC than Jim Allister.
Stephen Nolan, whether he likes it or not, is a public figure and as I’m sure he will accept, detailed public scrutiny of him comes with the territory.
The questions that members of the public would like to see put to Nolan effectively are not about his £450,000 wages, but other earnings he takes home via the BBC.
There’s no doubt that some of us who have received the Nolan treatment in the past would have enjoyed seeing him being put in the spotlight himself.
He has been unmerciful in some of his questioning of interviewees, but no one can complain. Those are the rules of the media jungle.
However, if he wants to be seen as someone who is in a position to scrutinise and lecture others, he must be beyond reproach.
He must submit himself to an at-length live scrutiny by another journalist to do that.
To frame his own interview within his own show has only led to more questions — not fewer.
As a public servant, paid for by the taxpayer, he cannot complain about being held to account in the same way that he has held other public figures and public servants under scrutiny during his media career.
We need to see proper scrutiny in this case — that’s the least we should expect, given the money we’ve paid him.