The Minister will be detained in the Dáil at this precise moment but the Parliamentary Secretary will remain.
Broadcasting Authority (Amendment) Bill, 1968: Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time".
The Parliamentary Secretary is an excellent listener.
On the last occasion we debated this matter, a fortnight or three weeks ago, I had been listing the cases of overt Government intervention, or attempted intervention, in the affairs of Radio Telefís Éireann, of which we have definite knowledge, over the period of the last eight or nine years. However, before doing that I had, in opening the debate, suggested there were four prerequisites of a really independent broadcasting service and I think it is no harm to recapitulate them at this point because they form the guidelines I want to take. The first of those is an alert public opinion, the second, a strong Director General, third, an independent board and fourth, legislation protecting the independence of the Authority. I think that all four of those are needed if we are to have an independent Radio Television Authority.
Having put forward these four prerequisites, I then reviewed the case which we have put forward in regard to all Government interference in television programmes. When the debate adjourned I was dealing with the intervention of the Minister for External Affairs, through the Taoiseach, in relation to the sending of a team to Vietnam, to cover the war in Vietnam, in both the north and the south of that country. The point I was making here was that the Minister for External Affairs in justifying in the Dáil his intervention on this occasion justified it on the basis of some general propositions which he put forward as having general validity and which it seems to me must be rejected if we are to safeguard freedom of speech in this country and if we are to have an independent television authority.
He said, the House may recall, that RTE is a semi-State body set up by this Parliament. He went on to say that there are many troubled parts in the world and that he does not believe that this semi-State body could have sent a team to Vietnam at the request or with the approval of the principals in the Government.
He went on, having stigmatised RTE as a semi-State body whose every action would be regarded externally as being acts of the Irish Government, to say that that body like, he claimed, other semi-State bodies should consult with the Department before sending people abroad where a difficult question might arise. He said that a very wise practice has grown up and has always obtained that where any other Government Department or semi-State body has contacts abroad, or anything to do with international conferences where a difficult question might arise, the Department of External Affairs is consulted. That had always been the case, and that it would be very wise for a semi-State body, when they go outside their normal function and across the line of international relations, to consult the Department before they send a team of this magnitude to the ends of the earth and not know whether the team were within the bounds of protocol.
The proposition then is that a semi-State body, and he defined RTE as such a body, in sending people abroad across the line of international relations are going outside their normal function and in these circumstances the Department of External Affairs should be consulted. This is the general proposition and he went on from that to draw the conclusion that, therefore, the action he took was justified in this case.
I am not so concerned with the individual case as the proposition put forward that RTE as a semi-State body acts in the name of the Government, and all its actions must be regarded as the actions of the Government. It is not an autonomous body and it has not got freedom of action and cannot act independently as a news gathering agency, and that in going outside this country to cover news events elsewhere it ought to consult the Department of External Affairs and effectively get that Department's permission. That is what is implied in the Minister's approach. It is all the more disturbing because it is reinforced by what the then Taoiseach, Deputy Seán Lemass, said on the same subject in the Dáil.
It may have some significance that both these are people of the older generation in Irish politics. I would hope there is a distinction in thinking between the older and younger generation on the other side of the House in this matter. Deputy Seán Lemass took a similar line and said that "RTE was set up by legislation as an instrument of public policy and as such was responsible to the Government. The Government had overall responsibility for its conduct, and especially the obligation to ensure that its programmes do not offend against the public interest or conflict with national policy as defined in legislation".
He went on to say that "to this extent the Government reject the view that RTE should be, either generally or in regard to its current affairs and news programmes, completely independent of Government supervision". He added that "the Government would take such action by way of representations or otherwise"—ominous words—"as may be necessary to ensure that RTE does not deviate from the due performance of this duty". He further stated that "the Government have, of course, a responsibility for the conduct of this State-sponsored body, as they have for every other State-sponsored body and the Government cannot divest themselves of their obligation".
These are very serious propositions to put forward. They are propositions which in the manner in which they are put forward and in the actions which they are held to justify, go beyond anything which was suggested when the Broadcasting Bill, 1963, was introduced. It introduced a completely different concept of the role of RTE which many people understood —I suspect in the Fianna Fáil party as well—when it was introduced.
First of all, there is this proposition that it is a semi-State body, that the Government has responsibility for its actions, and, indeed, Deputy Aiken went on to say that it would, of course, have been different if the group going to Vietnam were a private group. The Government then would have no responsibility. That would have been all right, a distinction which, to my mind, strikes at the root of the whole concept of such a body as RTE being a State-sponsored body. I had always accepted and thought that RTE was a semi-State body for which the Government had general responsibility, in a general sense, but the Government is not responsible for the day to day affairs of that body. The proposition insisted on, in the other House particularly, that Ministers have regard to all the various State-sponsored bodies in which they are concerned, would be adhered to, if anything more rigidly, in the case of RTE in that respect.
Yet, far from seeing that in this instance the Government have no responsibility for its day to day affairs we have here the explicit claim that they have responsibility for its state of affairs, that they have a duty of which they cannot divest themselves to control and supervise its day to day affairs, a proposition not only put forward in respect of any other State-sponsored body but specifically denied in respect of all other State-sponsored bodies. I would have thought, and I think most other people would have thought, that RTE would be treated in a special category as a State-sponsored body, that the cognisant nature of its tasks, as in all other things as an organ for the diffusion of news and of feature programmes, of public information and public guidance, that it would be kept at arm's length by any Government, that it would be given more freedom than any other State-sponsored body, that the Government would be meticulous in not interfering in any way with its presentation of news of current affairs and that even the limited intervention that the Government undertake in the affairs of State bodies—an intervention which does not normally run to interference with day to day affairs, that even this would not take place in the normal way in RTE.
Yet the Government have instead of taking up that attitude, which I think everybody understood they would take up at the time in 1967, have taken up the opposite attitude, the attitude that in the case of this body, and this body only, they have this responsibility to supervise its day to day affairs and decide where camera teams are sent, to decide what programmes may or may not appear and even to decide what news items may be broadcast. This is a proposition which has no parallel in relation to the government of any other State body.
Has the Senator forgotten that Fine Gael did just that in the Coalition Government in relation to the broadcasting of a football match?
I certainly have not forgotten it but I am thankful to be reminded and if Senator Ó Maoláin can remind me of the chapter and verse I am as willing to discuss that action as any action undertaken in this case here. I will make this point which I think has some justice. At that time Radio Éireann was, in fact, part of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. It has since been converted into a State body for the very purpose of giving it independence which it did not have, for the very purpose of preventing this kind of interference, which certainly as far as we know occurred in the case of two Ministers, Deputies Boland and Blaney in 1959-60 and which may have occurred as far as I know with other Ministers right back to 1936 and which, if it occurred, should not have occurred.
The second point which emerges from the analysis of what has been said in regard to the Vietnam case is that implication of the Minister for External Affairs that in purporting to report the Vietnam war RTE were going outside their normal functions because this condemnation of a body not consulting the Department before sending people out to the country related only to cases, and the sentence is here, "when they go outside their normal functions." If he was justifying in that statement his decision to prevent representatives from RTE being sent abroad he was clearly stating that it is not a normal function of RTE to report on foreign affairs in this way and that proposition runs contrary to anything I have heard on this side of the Iron Curtain. Indeed, it is contrary to anything that occurs on the other side of the Iron Curtain where if any such action were taken and implemented it would be taken quietly behind the scenes.
This we must reject totally. The function of RTE is to keep our people informed of what is happening in the world outside. It is one of their primary duties to keep us so informed, to report impartially what is happening. Foreign news agencies and newspapers do not always report impartially what is happening, do not report what is of interest to us and very often issue reports which are misleading public opinion here and elsewhere. The function of RTE, within its financial resources, should be to provide foreign coverage, to have representatives abroad to keep our people informed of what is happening outside. My great hope of RTE was that with its limited resources they would be able to post their correspondents throughout the world so that we would have direct access to what is happening, so that we would know what is happening, so that these correspondents would report directly to us what is happening. It has been my great disappointment that this has not happened with anything like the speed or to the extent I had hoped for. It is a matter I raised here in the House before.
Here we have a proposition by the Minister for External Affairs that it is not the normal function of RTE to report to us what is happening—that the position is that we should rely on some of the agencies to keep us informed, certainly not to do it for ourselves which, he said, was an abnormal function of RTE requiring the authority of the Minister for External Affairs.
The third proposition put by the Minister for External Affairs was that where a difficult situation may arise RTE may not send representatives without consulting the Department of External Affairs. I do not know what the term "difficult situation" means but I suspect it means anywhere where there is conflict. That is the Minister's implication. Perhaps, he was hinting that if nothing of any importance is happening in a country it might be all right for RTE to send people abroad—that it then might be a normal function of RTE—but that if there is conflict, if there is a situation as in Biafra where the rights and wrongs are not clear and where we have a vital interest, because of our missionaries, to know what is happening, that is a case where RTE representatives should not be sent.
Is the Senator aware that the missionaries are contradicting themselves?
Acting Chairman
Senator FitzGerald, without interruption.
Perhaps he means Vietnam where the issues are hotly debated throughout the world and, indeed, here even in our own political Parties where opinions are divided as between different personalities. We may not be informed of the events there because it would be improper because a difficult situation would arise. To have a representative in Paris today apparently would be improper because a difficult situation may arise. Such a proposition totally undermines the functions of a national news-gathering institution. It destroys our access to direct knowledge of what is happening in the world outside. It destroys and undermines our whole idea of one of the major functions of RTE—the bringing of the world to our doorsteps in terms we can understand, accept and appreciate.
The Minister's claim is incredible and I doubt very much if, in fact, it has the support of many of the people on the other side. I appreciate that it is difficult for members of any Party to repudiate anything that has been said in such circumstances but I submit that this is a hook off which Fianna Fáil should rapidly get in their own interests as well as the interests of the country.
We have not your troubles in that respect.
Which troubles are you talking about?
Our Leader agrees with us about most of what we are doing.
And so do we with ours and ours with us.
That is an enlightening intervention as an irrelevancy when so many relevant interruptions might have been made. It indicates a certain state of embarrassment on the other side. This is something at which Senator Ryan is adept. There are other statements made by Deputy Aiken to which we have to give attention in this context of considering what the normal functions of an independent television authority should be. There was the statement that first of all we have sufficient information already about Vietnam, that we have had pictures and newspaper stories. He spoke at some length on how well informed we are and said that, therefore, there is no need for additional reporting. He said people going to report such events should learn the language of the region and should live there for a considerable number of years before writing on the subject.
Is there any proposition so totally remote from the world we have been living in for centuries? It is incredible, but what is disturbing is that the Taoiseach, to some degree, tended to support the Minister for External Affairs. It was then I began to get worried because Deputy Aiken may not have been with us in Government, perhaps, quite as long as the Taoiseach. However, I was more worried about the Taoiseach who in a television interview, when asked to state the real reasons for the team not being sent to Vietnam, asked this question: "What is going on in Vietnam that you do not know about?" There was this extraordinary approach that we have to sit back, take everything we are told by other people but that it is quite wrong and abnormal to have our own direct coverage.
(Longford): Suppose we take the view that both sides are wrong and that is a question of degree, with very little right on either side——
Acting Chairman
Senator FitzGerald on the Bill.
I am more than happy to debate the war in Vietnam but this is not the occasion. I am not raising rights or wrongs. I am only pointing to the implication that it is improper for us to find out for ourselves by sending our own team——
Did any of them know the Vietnamese language?
We all know about the statement of the Minister for External Affairs in this respect which suggests that most reporting of most events is of limited value because in most parts of the world most correspondents do not know the language of the regions they are dealing with. The suggestion that this is so would not be acceptable anywhere else in the world.
If the Senator would permit me to point out——
On a point of order it is quite clear that the Leader of the House has set himself out to interrupt consistently——
Inconsistently.
I am never guilty of it.
——and he should be called on to restrain himself.
Acting Chairman
I have repeatedly done that.
Apropos the statement he has just made——
Acting Chairman
It is not in order.
Yes, but it is very unfair to say things which he thinks——
I show more tolerance of the Senator's interruptions than he does of mine. If Senators throw their minds back 50 years, something which I cannot do, they can try to visualise the time when Deputy Aiken was fighting for Irish independence and when my father was in charge of the publicity service of the Government at that time. What would they have said, what would Deputy Aiken have said if, when my father sought the co-operation of the news agencies and newspapers to send their representatives here to balance the propaganda sent out by the British, if he had been told by the State-owned news agencies of, for instance, France: "Of course we cannot send people to your country to report because it would suggest we took a view on the merits of the case, that we were allying ourselves with the rebel régime, a thing which would be improper for us to do?"
At that time we sought and secured and welcomed the co-operation of the world Press in telling the truth about what was happening in this country. In relation to that, when my father was arrested the Minister's father continued this work and kept the world informed of what was happening and the publicity we obtained at that time and the accuracy and truth of the reports sent out by us played a great part in moulding world opinion and helped to bring about the Truce and an end to the fighting. That was because the news agencies of the world felt that it was their duty to report what was happening here. They did not believe that they were interfering in the internal affairs of another country, that they were supporting revolt or causing embarrassment to the British Government.
While the Government have the power to prevent a programme being broadcast they have not the power to dictate what programme should be filmed or how the day to day affairs of the Authority should be carried on so their intervention in preventing the team going to Vietnam was wrong. Following the Vietnam affair we had the Biafran affair. It is my belief that the Government played no direct part in this at all although the contrary is widely believed. I see no advantage in levelling accusations against the Government which are untruthful or wild. The decision to recall the team going to Biafra when it had reached Lisbon was an internal decision, taken within the Authority and not as a result of the intervention of any Government Minister.
The decision to recall the team when it had reached Lisbon was clearly in keeping with the spirit and attitude of the intervention of the Minister for External Affairs in the Vietnam affair and so some of the blame for that decision with regard to Biafra must fall on him. If the intervention in the Vietnam affair had not taken place I do not think the decision about Biafra would have been made within the Authority. When it was discovered by the higher-ups in the Authority that a team was on its way to Biafra they felt that it was contrary to the Government's wish and they withdrew the team. I feel that some blame accrues to the Government.
The effect of this decision to withdraw the team when it had reached Lisbon has been seriously damaging to our reputation abroad. The teams of cameramen and reporters from the BBC, ITV and French State-controlled television company and teams from American companies were gathered in Lisbon waiting to go on to Biafra when suddenly the word came that the Irish team was to be recalled. At that stage it was thought erroneously that the Irish Government had interfered again and that is the impression that spread through every television station in the free world. That impression has damaged our prestige most seriously.
The proposition that was put forward for giving this decision was that the action of a semi-State body in sending a team to report on activities in Biafra would be taken as representing the viewpoint of the Irish Government and would be taken as interference by the Government in the internal affairs of a country recognised by us. That is the same kind of justification as was made in the Vietnam affair. That justification should never have been given, it is an argument that never should have been used. It undermines the whole possibility of Radio Telefís Éireann ever performing its function properly. No other television authority in the free world has taken this view and no other Government has made this argument.
The problem of the freedom of television authorities exists everywhere. I have no knowledge of Governmental interference with television authorities in any other country but I know of no case where a Government owned or controlled television authority has felt itself inhibited by Government intervention, direction or advice from reporting on world affairs because of a fear that such reporting would implicate its Government. No matter how much an authority is controlled by the State or how much it is under the thumb of the Government, as in France up to the last few days, there has never been any question of a Government being implicated in the affairs of another nation because of the activities of a television authority.
Everyone who has listened to the French Radio will know that in the reporting of world affairs they have been completely uninhibited and they have given the best news service of current affairs of any station whose language I can understand. After the excellent reporting by the BBC of the Arab-Israeli war last year a memorandum was circulated to the staff pointing out how much better the French coverage was and that they would need to pull up their socks if they wished to keep their place in the radio television world. There you have a station which was under the thumb of the French Government until a few days ago when the staff revolted, as the Telefís Éireann staff did here on a smaller scale, and yet at no stage was there any suggestion that they could not report or send out teams to any part of the world for fear of implicating the Government.
This kind of thing is unique in the Irish station. It must be resisted and we must make it clear that we will not accept this approach to the reporting of foreign affairs. Unless we can have from the Government an explicit assurance that there will be no future interference and that the responsibilities of the RTE Authority will be related to those of the BBC and of the station which was until a few days ago under the control of the late French Government—I suppose it can now be described as the late French Government—I have to say that the advice I will offer my Party will have to be that this Authority will have to be taken out of the control of the Government.
There would be problems in taking the Authority out of Government control but we will have to find some other solution for these problems if we cannot have an explicit assurance that the view expressed by Deputy Aiken and endorsed by Deputy Lemass and the Taoiseach is not the view of the Government. We are prepared to make it clear that this is an independent Authority where the reporting of world affairs is concerned, that we do not regard its actions as in any way implicating the Government and that we do not consider that it is so regarded anywhere else. Unless we can have that assurance we will have to consider a different form of ownership and control. I do not know what the exact solution is but I suspect that what we will have to do will be to establish a trust, possibly run, controlled and owned by the trade unions, farmers' organisations and other representative bodies which would own the shares in this body, and appoint directors if that is the only way of making it clear that this body is not a Government agency, that the Government are not responsible for its actions, and that it has the independence to report on news events outside and inside this country as every other similar body has.
In going over the cases of interference by the Government there is one that I have not mentioned so far. Although it is a bit out of place at this point I should put it on the record.
You admitted the last one was not the case.
Oh yes, quite clear, no question about that.
After admitting that you talked about it for a quarter of an hour as though it were.
No, I spoke on it for about three minutes and I gave my reason for dealing with it because I felt that the Authority's decision had been influenced by the Government's attitude on a previous occasion. I should like now to deal with the unpleasant affair where the Minister for Local Government rang up to inquire whether a programme was taking place and due to faulty communication was misinformed that no such programme was taking place and when it was found out that such a programme had been prepared it was then cancelled lest the Minister be offended. The offence of the Minister in this case is, on the surface at least, a minor one. He could claim that he was simply making a polite inquiry, but the purport of the inquiry could hardly have been lost on a Television Authority which had received so many similar Ministerial inquiries over the years.
I should like to make the point here that all the cases I have mentioned where there has been Government interference have been cases of attempted suppression. I think this is important because there is a danger that our people will come to believe that because of repeated Government attempts to suppress programmes that there is interference in this body with the actual reporting of events, that is to say, that the Government are in some way inserting news in the programmes. I must say I have no evidence that this has ever happened. Of course, one cannot prove a negative, but I have no evidence that the Government has ever sought or certainly ever succeeded in getting things put in or programmes put on.
Indeed, they have not, not with that bunch in Montrose.
What they have done, as far as I am aware, is all in the line of suppression. I think this is important because to suggest otherwise would be to reflect on the integrity of the staff of Telefís Éireann, to suggest that they would be a party to the broadcasting of Government propaganda at the request of the Government without it being done through the proper channels by Ministerial direction. They have never lent themselves to that as far as I am aware and I think it highly improbable that they would. They are not responsible for things being suppressed. Short of a similar revolution to the one being carried out in the French Radio and Television Authority they cannot do anything about suppressions but they can ensure by their professional integrity that there is not interference in securing the broadcasting of Government propaganda. As far as I am aware they have carried out their professional duties in that regard excellently and I would make no suggestion to the contrary. It is important that this should be said because there have been so many cases of interference by suppression that some people could come to believe that in some respects Telefís Éireann is a propaganda organ of the Government and I think people's faith in the integrity of what is put out on this station should not be undermined and the impartiality of what is put out should not be impugned.
There is one other matter I would like to mention because this House is entitled to know how it stands at the present time. The House will recall that in the Dáil several months ago a photocopy of an instruction in the newsroom of Radio Telefís Éireann not to report the PR Referendum was handed to the Taoiseach who agreed to investigate it. I should like the Minister to tell us what has happened. There were rather odd reports that the investigation was going to take the form of an internal one only which could give us no guarantee of an independent view on what had happened and, secondly, that the line taken seemed to be much more to investigate who had passed this document on so they could be victimised than how it came to be given and what its significance was. The trade unions took a hand and the last I heard was that some investigation was being carried out about which they seemed to be fairly happy. Several months have passed. It should not take too many months to investigate what the circumstances were in which a two or three line document was issued within the newsroom by one member of the staff to other members of the staff. I think at this stage we are entitled to know what happened and to have a report from whatever independent body or bodies with independent members may have investigated it.
I suspect myself that this may not be as sinister an event as may have appeared at first sight but may have been simply part of a policy, a mistaken policy I believe, in the newsroom of trying to avoid trouble by not reporting anything controversial. This policy in the newsroom of Radio Éireann has a long history because it goes back to the night on which we declared a Republic in this country rather belatedly in 1949 at midnight outside the G.P.O. Radio Éireann went off the air at 11 o'clock to avoid reporting anything so controversial. They had not, perhaps, as much news since then as they have now. We have had other cases of this over-impartiality when there are general election campaigns here the major speeches on either side are not reported. The whole election campaign is passed over as if it was not happening and only the results given when they come in. The reasons given are difficulty of impartiality, that there would be too much time taken up and, perhaps, off the record that the speeches were very dull anyway, but I do not think it is a practice to be encouraged or continued. Even the French television service at its worst reported opposition as well as Government speeches in election campaigns. If in that kind of State such reporting is possible I do not think we should regard politicians' speeches as taboo when everything else is reported even events of a minor character on the domestic front.
In one instance at least this overconcern with impartiality and keeping politics off the air led to what I regard as an unfair result. I know an unfair result was not intended by the staff concerned but it shows what can happen when one tries to control reporting in this way. I refer to the Presidential campaign when the speeches of the two candidates were not reported but the appearances of the existing President were reported with extraordinary frequency and to an extraordinary degree because he was very active at that particular time. It happened that the outgoing President was also one of the two candidates. This was not an intentional case of lack of impartiality on the part of the staff and I have no reason to think it was dictated from outside. It may have been but I have no reason to believe it. However, it shows what can happen if you take the line that you are not going to report the major speeches of either side in an election campaign and at other times or the major speeches in a referendum campaign. This kind of abnegation of responsibility by the newsroom of a kind which you do not get in any other country that I know of, and I have direct knowledge of broadcasting, shows that this is something we should think about again and when it can lead to the unfairness of the situation in the Presidential election I think it is something we should think twice about. It is not a question of lack of impartiality. It is a question of over-caution, a desire to avoid trouble. It may be that the circular was motivated by the same thing rather than anything more sinister. I regard the whole situation as unsatisfactory and it needs to be reviewed. In any event we are entitled to a full account of the report of the inquiry into this incident.
This, however, was an internal problem. A more important problem, perhaps, which we face in dealing with this question of the independence of our radio-television Authority is the particular sensitivity of the Government to criticism. Perhaps, I am going too far in stressing the particular sensitivity of the Government—it is very hard to remember just how sensitive other Governments were and I cannot make a comparison between them—but there is extreme sensitivity in the case of this Government to criticism. We have seen it in the suppression of the civil defence programme, and the programme on Nítrigin Éireann some years ago before it was established.
It is now past 9.30 p.m. Perhaps the Senator would move the adjournment of the debate.
Yes, I move the adjournment.
Continuing along the lines of the programme Peyton Place. I refer you to UTV.
I do not think that even Government interference with Radio Telefís Éireann is quite as scandalous as that.
Debate adjourned.