Broadcaster's dispirited employees say they are bearing the brunt of both management missteps and political hostility
RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst pictured with NUJ Dublin broadcasting branch chair Emma O Kelly and other staff at a union rally on its Donnybrook campus in July. Photograph: Alan Betsoncanteen, oblivious. The broadcaster’s main staff restaurant was shut again this week “as a precaution”, and to allow for monitoring of the drains. During the summer, exterminators found droppings, smear marks and a chewed cable.
Bakhurst, flanked by director of human resources Eimear Cusack, reiterated that there will be no compulsory redundancies at RTÉ, which employs more than 1,800 people, but added that it must become “a smaller organisation”. Amid uncertainty about what this means, he is said to have tried more than once to wrap up the meeting, only for more questions and contributions to pour in.
Her account was “very disheartening”, one attendee said. Another attendee, however, noted that the general feel of the almost two-hour meeting was less angry than the fraught town hall held in November 2019 by Bakhurst’s predecessor, Dee Forbes. “We would certainly like to see the NewERA report, and on what basis they are saying RTÉ should come up with €21 million itself,” says Emma O Kelly, who chairs the Dublin broadcasting branch of the National Union of Journalists.
“My words are not meaningless and empty,” he responded to Independent TD Verona Murphy, who had alleged they were. The atmosphere in the news and current affairs division is more subtly strained these days. Journalists are aware that their role is acknowledged to be at the heart of RTÉ's public service remit. But they are simultaneously concerned about the organisation’s cut-through in a crowded, tumultuous news landscape where people increasingly source information from algorithm-driven social media apps such as TikTok.
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