RTÉ should have sent Mary Finan, the chairwoman of the authority, to the Oireachtas committee yesterday, argues Vincent Browne
She would hardly have made the mess the RTÉ executives made of their defence of High Society, the two-part series on cocaine addition, broadcast last month to derisive critique. As an experienced public relations consultant, Mary Finan would have known not to confuse an acknowledgment of error with a claim there had been no error.
The inquiry into the debacle was undertaken by Noel Curran, arguably the most impressive executive, certainly on the editorial side, in the station (this is not intended as faint praise). But the self-congratulatory bits of his report were disappointing, for they masked not just what was wrong with the High Societyseries, but what is wrong about much of RTÉ news and current affairs. And it was the self-congratulatory bits that confused the message at the Oireachtas committee yesterday.
Noel Curran's report had said: "A greater level of access to, and interrogation of, the source material should have been sought by RTÉ." If what is meant by this is that RTÉ should have questioned more closely the material upon which the programme was founded, then that is certainly true and it is welcome this is acknowledged.
But what is this "interrogation" stuff? His report went on to claim: "The RTÉ television series was based on a published book High Society. The publishers and their lawyers have stated that they know the identities of all interviewed in the book and stand over its veracity. RTÉ accepts these assurances."
Can this be real? That because publishers of a book say they know the identity of, for instance, the Government Minister concerned, who "admitted" in Buswells Hotel, across Kildare St from the Dáil, to the journalist Justine Delaney Wilson, that he consumed cocaine, that's enough for RTÉ?
And if it is enough for the authority to accept the word of the publishers and the journalist, without any of this interrogation business, what was wrong about whoever it was in RTÉ that was responsible for this debacle, doing the same? If they don't engage in "interrogation", why should he have engaged in "interrogation".
And then the self-congratulation. "In highlighting a major national social problem, the public interest was served by the broadcast of this series as attested to by a body of professional specialists in this field."
This is backed by a series of quotations from professionals justifiably interested not in journalistic integrity, but in awakening public opinion to what they perceive as a social problem.
Well, with due regard to the professionals, I don't accept the public interest was served by the series, nor do I accept that in most of what RTÉ does in relation to the drugs phenomenon, the public interest is served at all.
Cocaine abuse is a social problem, but the thrust of much of RTÉ's coverage of the phenomenon is to suggest that it is a widespread, pervasive problem. There are no recent statistics available on the prevalence of cocaine consumption in Ireland - the last survey was done four years ago. The National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD) will be publishing a prevalence report next month and we will know then the size of the phenomenon.
But we have some indicators about the scale of cocaine use. The European drug agency EMCDDA estimates that 3 per cent of all adults in Europe aged between 15 and 64 have used cocaine at least once in their lives.
A third of these took cocaine during the previous year and half of these took cocaine during the previous month. This means that about 0.5 per cent of the adult population took cocaine over the previous month. And the data suggests that, for at least two-thirds of those who have ever taken cocaine, the drug is not a problem for them.
In the US the statistics are higher. Almost 15 per cent of the population aged between 12 and 64 have taken cocaine in their lives and 2.5 per cent took cocaine over the previous year. Again, this is suggestive that cocaine use for most people is not a problem, otherwise the number of people who took cocaine during the previous year as a proportion of the number of people who ever took cocaine would be far higher.
The figures for Ireland are likely to be that about 4 per cent of the adult population have taken cocaine in their lifetime, with about 1 per cent having taken cocaine in the previous year and 0.5 per cent having taken cocaine in the previous month.
It would be better if people did not take cocaine, but the prevalent contention that the consumption of cocaine at all is necessarily harmful and addictive is obviously false.
It would also be better if people did not drink here, for the problems related to the consumption of alcohol are far, far greater than in the case of cocaine.
Instead of presenting a balanced picture of the cocaine phenomenon, RTÉ has greatly exaggerated the issue, in a way more typically associated with tabloid journalism. But then that is what RTÉ does as a matter of routine with regard to crime.