IRELAND
The Irish Times
MARIE O’HALLORAN
UNION REACTION: THE Broadcasting Authority of Ireland report into RTÉ’s Mission to Prey programme gave the impression that reporter Aoife Kavanagh had a “degree of executive responsibility that she did not have”, according to National Union of Journalists Irish secretary Séamus Dooley.
“You could get the impression from the report that Aoife Kavanagh was going on some kind of solo run in the legal aspects of the programme, and nothing could be further from the truth,” said Mr Dooley, who is the union representative for Ms Kavanagh and former current affairs editor Ken O’Shea.
The Prime Time Investigates documentary libelled Fr Kevin Reynolds, claiming he had sexually abused a young girl and fathered her child while a missionary in Kenya. The BAI report was highly critical of journalistic standards involved in the broadcast and found a significant failure of editorial and managerial control within RTÉ.
“Our concern is in relation to post-transmission events,” Mr Dooley said. He said one of the issues involved a letter in reply to Fr Reynolds’s solicitors Fair & Murtagh that was signed by the reporter.
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