If one was to take at face value the lengthy and onerous statement issued on Tuesday by RTE, one could only conclude that the now former Director General, Dee Forbes, was solely and entirely to blame for the shady pay deal agreed with Ryan Tubridy.
This was not just implied: It was stated openly by the organisation. As the BBC notes:
No member of RTÉ’s executive board could have known figures published for Ryan Tubridy’s pay were wrong other than former director general Dee Forbes, RTÉ’s interim deputy director general has said.
That this doesn’t wash is something that anybody of average intelligence could have figured out within moments – the lawyers who signed off on the contracts would presumably have had some inkling of what was in them. The financial team tasked with making the payments would presumably have had to have those payments authorised, and known for what purpose they were made. Tubridy himself knew, as did his agent.
And besides, it strikes at another major problem: If RTE’s claim is true, then it is an extraordinary way to run a state organisation if one staff member – however senior – can sign off on payments amounting to over €300,000 without having to tell anyone else what those payments were for, or to whom they were going.
Then yesterday, we had the ominous statement from RTE that Mr. Tubridy’s contract has expired, and negotiations on a new one have been paused. It seems relatively certain that it will be a long time before we see him on RTE again.
It is not hard to see what the objective here, from RTE’s side is: The aim is to tie this up as neatly as possible in a bow, with Ms. Forbes and Mr. Tubridy to blame, while the rest of the organisation is entirely blameless and should be allowed to continue with business as usual. It will not have greatly upset RTE, you’d imagine, to see various correspondents leading protests and talking about how much work they do with so few resources.
Somehow, there are those within the organisation who would almost like us to believe that the problem with Mr. Tubridy’s pay was a result of RTE having too little money, rather than too much. If only our real journalism was properly funded, they say, this kind of thing would never have happened.
This attempt to create a “good” RTE versus a few bad apples corrupting the organisation is basically crisis PR 101: The idea is to deflect public attention away from the RTE brand, and onto one or two individuals who can be discarded as villains.
And yet, it should not be treated seriously. The sudden eagerness of RTE journalists to hold their own organisation to account, and to ask hard questions of RTE management, is of course an entirely new development: Perhaps, had these questions been asked earlier, this kind of scandal might have been avoided.
What is one to make of revelations that RTE staff are entirely unhappy with the pay doled out to senior “talent”, when they emerge in the aftermath of a scandal? There are but two possibilities: Either this unhappiness is entirely new and convenient, or, on the other hand, RTE’s journalists were afraid for years to turn their searchlights on their own organisation, even when they knew it was being mis-managed.
If all this public outrage is to be taken seriously, and considered to reflect long-standing concerns about RTE staff, then what does it say about those staff that these concerns could not be reported on or spoken about before? What it says, I fear, is that RTE was riddled with a culture of never speaking a bad word about the shop, or the people upstairs.
Either that, or the present protests are entirely self-serving, seeking to limit the chances of major reform at the station on the old “few bad apples” basis.
Either way, this is either a public service broadcaster that was unwilling to turn the spotlight on itself, or unable to. Given that RTE is one of the largest recipients of public money in the state, this suggests deep rooted cultural problems that go well beyond Dee Forbes, or Ryan Tubridy.
Neither politicians, nor the public, should buy it.