Ms Deirdre McCarthy:

These decisions about stories are made by editors who work in the newsroom. They make their decisions on the basis of the prominence and importance of a story, the public interest element involved, what we can and cannot stand up in relation to a story in the context of verification and whether more investigation will be required. There are many factors every single day with every story. However, we do watch because we know from the dashboards what people are interested in. Also, we can deal with 30 to 50 stories every day. Many of those are domestic; a large number are international.