RTE loses it’s balls, 24 hours after showing everyone the Taoiseach’s
Yes Mary, this is what toilet doors are for. And yes, I know this isn't the actual painting, I just like this one more
Proving this week that nothing makes a story out of a non-story better than a bit of hyper-sensitivity, the government sought, and was promptly given an apology by RTE for running a story on Monday’s 9 o’clock news about some pretty innocuous paintings some cheeky monkey put up in a few galleries around the capital, depicting Brian Cowen taking a shite.
The government’s main reasons for complaining were the apparently flippant manner in which the story was dealt with, along with RTE’s decision to show footage of the paintings themselves during the report. Stating that they didn’t chose to complain about an article concerning the charicatures which ran in last Sunday’s Tribune due to the “straight-forward nature of the reporting” on the part of the paper. Personally I just don’t get it. The story was specifically about the paintings in question, and the fact the story ran at the end of the broadcast, in that “funny thing happened today” section would seem appropriate. I mean, it’s not like there’s not much else going on or anything, so I’d have to think the report was given the amount of gravity it deserved, that being very little.
Of course the paintings thing isn’t the real story, the most interesting, and worrying thing about all this is that 24 hours later RTE issued a public apology to the Taoiseach and his family, to the government and everyone else. Worrying because I assumed it was still ok to report the news, and if the news is a funny picture of a public official taking a dump, then so be it. The nature of the apology might have a thing or two to do with the fact that RTE get liscence fee money from the government, unlike The Sunday Tribune, so perhaps it was easier to turn the screw on the lads in Donnybrook?
In the apology, there was a quote something along the lines of “insulting the office of Taoiseach”, which is pretty gay, to use a journalistic term, if leinster house can demand such a grovelling apology from the national broadcaster for something so unimportant it doesn’t bode well for the future, given how much of a shitty job they’re doing in general will RTE be less eager to go after them the next time something comes up? I hope not.
Fianna Fail TD Mary O’Rourke was hilariously uncomfortable with the whole thing on Newstalk’s lunchtime show yesterday, I don’t normally recommend checking out day-old talk-radio podcasts, but this one might be worth it. It certainly gave the whole thing a little perspective, hearing poor Mary mumbling about “doing your private business”, then mumbling some more, then stating “Sure, why do they have doors on toilets? So you can close them, to do whatever, do ya know, whatever you need to do, your own personal, eh, business”. It was pretty great. She also claimed the paintings were “bordering on obscenity”, which is interesting, I’m assuming somebody told her these were paintings of Brian Cowen on the shitter, not the contents of Max Mosely’s photo album?
