The managing director of premium-rate call company Psychics Live is to lodge a complaint with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC) over an item on the Today with Pat Kenny programme on RTÉ Radio yesterday.
Tom Higgins is to make a formal complaint this morning after comments made by Pat Kenny yesterday in relation to the upholding by the BCC of a previous complaint made over an interview with Mr Higgins in November 2005.
On yesterday's programme, while introducing a recorded adjudication by the BCC, Pat Kenny gave a statement of his own in which he said that Irish Psychics Live had been "caught" by the programme's reporter "to be in breach of regulations in regard to informing its customers of the charges being run up using premium-rated phone lines".
To put it at its kindest, he said, "the so-called psychics' service provided was shown to be valueless". Kenny added: "For our part, we believe then, and continue to believe that there is no neutrality required when vulnerable people are being exploited."
In its adjudication, the BCC said it upheld two complaints against the original item on the basis that it infringed the fairness regulations of the Broadcasting Act, 2001. While acknowledging that the subject matter was of public interest and that the interview would therefore be expected to be conducted robustly, the commission noted that "the presenter made statements throughout the piece that were an expression of his own opinions".
It added: "While playing the devil's advocate is an acceptable interviewing style, the commission believes that the interviewer, in both tone and content, persisted with statements and allegations in a partial manner and concludes that the interviewer dealt with the subject matter in an unfair manner."
Mr Higgins said he was "flabbergasted" at Kenny's "extraordinary" statement on yesterday's programme. "What I was unhappy with was how Pat Kenny introduced it. He dug a trench he didn't need to dig.
"That repeated what he did in the first interview. [ Yesterday's] broadcast was, if anything, worse than the first one. At least on that occasion I was there to put my point across, but [ yesterday] there was no attempt to present any balance . . . He has attacked us for breaching regulations and then with this seems to be saying that he doesn't have to observe the statutory regulations in relation to the BCC. It makes a mockery of the BCC's decision."
Mr Higgins said he did not believe his company was in breach of regulations, while he regarded the charge that its service "was shown to be valueless" as defamatory. "I am actively taking legal advice," he said.
Mr Higgins's original complaint alleged that RTÉ and Pat Kenny failed in their duty to conduct an interview with him in an impartial manner.