RTE COULD LEARN FROM BEN DUNNE
WHAT a dreadful way to end a 40-year working life. No matter what you think of the whole ‘RTÉgate’ row, you can’t help feeling sorry for the woman whose modest retirement bash kicked off this entire episode.
We’ve all been to these hooleys over the years, and they’re generally the epitome of goodwill and harmless good cheer: a bunch of workmates gathering to give a valued colleague a memorable send- off. Unfortunately for Phil Collins, the popular reception supervisor at Montrose, her going-away ceremony is not likely to be forgotten in a hurry.
The organisers of the event did their best to make it as close to a normal retirement party as possible, just without the ‘party’ bit. There was the obligatory mocked-up front page that all media retirees get, in this case from the RTÉ Guide, but no drink, no party food, no music, no late night… I was going to say, ‘no sore heads’, but there are plenty of those, and again for all the wrong reasons.
The photographs of the event speak for themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they tell the whole truth. I’ve been out to RTÉ several times over the past eight months, and I’ve seen the impressive lengths that the station has gone to in order to make the essential business of broadcasting as safe as possible for everyone involved.
Forgiveness
Instead of being asked to turn up well in advance of a live broadcast, for example, guests are now often told to arrive at the l ast minute – the poor researchers’ nerves must be in flitters – or else kept segregated right up to going on air. The make-up department was shut for a time (not good news if you’ve landed out there with a scrubbed and pasty face expecting to be transformed), there’s no cup of tea and plate of biscuits on a trolley while you wait, and definitely no ‘green room’ hospitality: screens, sanitisers, masks and big scary warnings signs greet you at every turn.
So what happened? The ordinary person – i.e. not your fuming Twitter lynch-mob warrior – will have looked at those pictures and seen a couple of familiar faces obligingly posing for a retiring friend’s family album. Some are holding their masks in their hands, so I’ll go out on a limb here and speculate that they removed them for the few seconds it took to snap the photos, so that Ms Collins’s retirement pictures don’t look like she was being released by a gang of masked captors when she shows them to her grandchildren in years to come.
Did it really merit the on-air mea culpas from the presenters involved? Not everyone is on Twitter, actually, and I know several people who hadn’t a clue why David McCullagh and Eileen Dunne were begging t heir forgiveness on Friday night.
And does it really merit a full Oireachtas Committee inquiry, at a time when our politicians have more to concern them, for no other purpose than to forcefeed humble pie to director general Dee Forbes? You’ve all got scores to settle, guys, we get it, but is there really a need to ‘ calm public concern’, as Fianna Fáil TD Niamh Smyth pompously insists?
That’s not to say that mistakes weren’t made but, as always, the errors were more to do with the subsequent handling of the matter than the core issue itself. RTÉ, after all, ought to set the bar for communication skills and yet, once again, the lessons of countless previous f udges, obfuscations, delays and missteps went unheeded.
A swift response, outlining exactly what the event entailed, when and how it was planned, and how long it lasted, and a sincere apology for the obvious breaches, would have killed the story stone dead. By failing to do so, RTÉ has allowed it to drag on, handed an open goal to Sinn Féin on the Bobby Storey funeral, and undermined its ability to hold Covid transgressors to account in future: anyone being grilled need only say, ‘You’re fine ones to talk’.
Slip-ups
Far from being alarmed, as Deputy Smyth suggests, I believe the public appreciates exactly how these slip-ups can occur, since few of us are entirely without sin here. To understand all, as the saying goes, is to forgive all, and we’re all blundering our way through uncharted waters. Coming straight out with your hands up, rather than having the details slowly extracted like stubborn molars, is always the best way to confront a damaging story – ask Phil Hogan, or Séamus Woulfe, or Maria Bailey, or Barry Cowen, or any number of high-profile examples you care to mention.
Better still, ask Ben Dunne. His strategy of calling a press conference and answering all questions up front, when he was caught in an embarrassing drama many years ago, has never been bettered. Alas, it has also rarely been followed.