RTE to blame for 'High Society'

Sean O'Rourke got it right in his evisceration of Kevin Dawson, RTÉ commissioning editor (factual programmes). His focus in his News at One interview was not on the hapless, inexperienced journalist, Justine Delaney Wilson, who was responsible for the High Society series but on the RTÉ executive who oversaw the series.

What is remarkable about these programmes is that they made the airwaves at all. Assertion after assertion was made by the presenter, Ms Delaney Wilson, without ever showing back up authentication of what was being asserted. That RTÉ allowed that on air at all, given the journalistic ineptitude of the programmes is one of the two major issues at stake.

The other issue is why RTÉ did not seek to verify the contentions made in the programme. Any editor would require a reporter, especially an inexperienced reporter, to show the evidence – in this instance the tapes of the interviews with proof that the interviewees were who the reporter claimed they were. Clearly this did not happen in this instance.
How this was omitted in the instances of the government minister and the airline pilot is remark able, especially given the implausibility that a government minister would disclosers to an inexperienced journalist information which, if disclosed, would destroy their career.  

There were other implausibilities. For instance, the barrister, who was interviewed and claimed to take coke regularly in her office. Some barristers do have offices, most of the younger ones do not and anyway, most barristers spend most of their working days in court, at least during term time. It could be that a barrister with an office told the reporter about the coke-taking, but there is a prima facie implausibility which should have promoted RTÉ to make further enquiries. 

Vincent Browne