Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Public service broadcasting is indeed important but the question is how to define it. Public service broadcasting is not about telling people what to think. Sometimes one might look at the output of our national broadcaster and see a deliberate attempt to tell people how to think on major matters as opposed to reporting what happens. A lot of media - not just broadcast media - has moved into the realm of telling people what is the most appropriate way to think.

As the Covid pandemic took hold in Ireland, I recall the then director general of RTÉ Dee Forbes writing an email to all Members of the Oireachtas telling us RTÉ would unify the people. I found it a bit worrying because it was the kind of thing you might expect from a state broadcaster on the far side of the Iron Curtain 30 years ago.

I do not believe the role of a broadcaster is to unify people behind a Government position. The role of a broadcaster is to probe and examine, and it failed to do that a lot of the time with regard to its coverage of the pandemic, which was bolstered, of course, by the fact it was getting additional moneys from the State in the forms of vast sums of money from the HSE, a little bit less from the Department of Health, and indeed other Departments to fund its very one-sided coverage which was lacking any sort of probing of the appropriateness of the response.

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