The closure of RTÉ’s London bureau betrays the stations vision & public duty values
Says Brian O’Connell
After more than 20 years as RTÉ’s London editor, Brian O’Connell above left resigned from the broadcaster last week after it closed its Westminster-based bureau
Just inside the entrance to RTÉ’s bureau in Westminster is a large sign listing the national broadcaster’s vision, mission and values.
Its first line states that the company’s vision is to grow the trust of the people of Ireland as it informs, inspires, reflects and enriches their lives. Last week, in an effort to cut costs, RTÉ closed the bureau and I resigned after more than 20 years as London editor. RTÉ no longer has any editorial staff based in Britain, which will now be covered from Dublin, Belfast or Brussels.
Shortly after RTÉ’s director general, Noel Curran, announced the planned closure last March, the then acting director of news and current affairs, Cillian de Paor, sought to explain the decision in a radio interview.
He referred to the summer 2011 riots in Britain. I had been on holiday at the time and RTÉ had dispatched a reporter from Dublin who covered the unrest comprehensively for a week. Cillian de Paor told RTÉ radio’s The Media Show: “That is, in fact, the model, almost, for how I would like to cover a breaking news story.” What he did not reveal was that the reporter who had been sent from Dublin had the RTÉ London bureau’s technical infrastructure at his disposal, including a radio and television studio, editing facilities and RTÉ’s permanent video link to Dublin. Since the closure of the London bureau those RTÉ facilities are no longer available to visiting reporters.
There is no doubt that changing technology allows for less reliance on such infrastructure and greater mobility when covering stories abroad. In fact, most of RTÉ’s London savings will be infrastructural costs. That is why, when the closure was announced, I argued for the retention of an RTÉ presence in Britain without a bureau. I wanted RTÉ to follow the example of other national broadcasters – particularly those from small countries – that maintain correspondents in London working from home and hiring facilities only when required.
Cillian de Paor admitted in his radio interview that there was “still value in having people on the ground”, but RTÉ has decided not to retain a staff correspondent in London working from home. The broadcaster correctly points to its financial obligation to break even. But RTÉ’s evisceration of its London operation and its removal of any presence “on the ground” betrays its basic public service responsibility to cover the affairs of its closest neighbour and its implications for Ireland. This lack of any nuanced approach to cost-cutting in London has been central in my decision to leave the broadcaster.
RTÉ has many talented and experienced journalists in Dublin, Belfast and Brussels and they will do an excellent job covering planned and diary events in Britain, for example a visit by a president or taoiseach.
However, as any journalism student knows, the job is not simply about what has happened but why it has happened. Much of a correspondent’s job is explaining the unforeseen and the unfamiliar to viewers, listeners and readers back home. The ability to do that comes from living in a country, building contacts and forming impressions.
There have been instances over the past two decades covering Westminster when small (and usually unreported) turns of phrase or actions by one government have delighted or infuriated the other side, leading to unforeseen changes in attitude. It is the kind of journalism I recently described to a class of students as “being there”. The need to “be there” is why news organisations still employ resident correspondents and the Ryanair journalism now proposed by RTÉ is no substitute.
For decades RTÉ has been a member of the Westminster lobby system, RTÉ and The Irish Times being the only two foreign news organisations to hold such membership.
That inclusion in domestic political briefings, often derided as being an old boys’ network for the dissemination of government spin, provides useful access and did so particularly during the years of peace process negotiations of the Major and Blair premierships. RTÉ’s departure has meant the loss of that access. Of course the story has changed since the days when RTÉ’s London team covered Northern Ireland’s political leaders coming and going from Downing Street but, as US Senator George Mitchell remarked earlier this year, the Good Friday agreement was only the end of the beginning.
The UK is Ireland’s biggest trading partner and our most important source of incoming tourism revenue. Earlier this month the Government allocated about €6 million of Irish taxpayers’ money in grants for organisations that support some of our emigrants in Britain. There are more than half a million people from Ireland living in Britain and the numbers are still growing by the day. If you count the second- and third-generation descendants of immigrants, the Irish form the UK’s largest ethnic minority. It is significant that President Michael D Higgins has for the first time appointed a representative of that diaspora to the Council of State. However, RTÉ’s decision to close London has been met with disbelief by members of the Irish community who believe they have lost a voice that should be heard back home.
The closure has also raised concern across the political spectrum both in the Oireachtas and the Westminster parliament. The wording of a House of Commons motion condemning the move, signed by dozens of MPs, stated that “on-the-spot access for Irish-based media and engagement in public life in this jurisdiction is vital to fulfil the vision of future British-Irish relations as set out by the prime minister and the Irish Taoiseach in their historic statement of March 12th, 2012.”
That statement was signed in Downing Street by the Taoiseach and David Cameron. Its opening line declares, “The relationship between our two countries has never been stronger or more settled, as complex or as important, as it is today.”
Just over a fortnight after it was signed RTÉ announced its decision to, in the words of one former editor of this newspaper, “block up the window facing our nearest and most important neighbour”.
In his Media Show interview, Cillian de Paor stressed that the decision was necessary in order to retain RTÉ’s “credibility in terms of running a business”. He was speaking as an experienced senior manager operating in difficult financial circumstances. However, the cost to our national news and current affairs broadcaster will be to forfeit the trust which, according to the sign still hanging in my former office, RTÉ seeks to grow as it informs the people of Ireland.
Eugene Gillespie’s hands were so tightly bound by wire ’if he lived they’d be cut off’
A MURDER HUNT HAS BEEN LAUNCHED AFTER A PENSIONER WAS TORTURED, TIED UP AND LEFT TO DIE IN HIS OWN HOUSE.
Eugene Gillespie, 67, was found unconscious in his Sligo home at 9pm on Friday and died less than 12 hours later.
His attacker broke his jaw and tied his hands so tightly that, had he lived, they may have had to be amputated.
Relatives found him unconscious and bleeding when they called to his house after he failed to answer his phone.
One source said: “Word is his hands were bound so tight the blood supply was cut off.
“He was also beaten. It looks like whoever did it was looking for money and battered him around the head when he either couldn’t or didn’t hand it over.
“He was a lovely gentle man and he was left to die alone. When he was found he was unconscious, and no one knows how long his ordeal lasted.”
Probe … gardai sealed off Sligo house
Vintage car enthusiast Mr Gillespie lived alone just 60 metres from a garda station.
He was rushed to hospital on Friday night, but never regained consciousness.
A post mortem was carried out yesterday as forensic experts made a fingertip search of his home.
They will be gathering CCTV evidence from local shops and businesses to track his last movements.
Mr Gillespie, a former shopkeeper and Eircom employee, was known for his love of classic cars.
He was a member of the Connaught Veteran & Vintage Car Club and was a well known face on the circuit.
One pal said: “He was the heart of the club. We will miss him.”
Another heartbroken friend said: “Eugene was a nice guy, a very quiet man. He never had a bad word to say about anyone.”
‘Women cheat more than men’
Pink above pic. has revealed that she thinks that women cheat more than men, but are more capable at not getting caught.
The popstar believes that females are better at covering their infidelities than guys, explaining: “Everyone’s always like, ‘Ah the man cheats,’ but I think women cheat more than men, we just don’t get caught.”
The 33-year-old singer has been married to motocross racer Carey Hart since 2006. The couple broke up between 2008 and 2009, however they are back together and have a 15-month-old daughter Willow Sage.
Pink added that she is not tempted to cheat on her husband, saying: “I have been in a relationship with this man for 10 years and I have figured out that no one can push your buttons like your mother or your partner.
“I have a tattoo on my wrist that says ‘True Love’ with Carey’s name under it”.
However, the star does understand how people could be tempted to cheat, which she wrote about in her new song Where Did the Beat Go.
She told music streaming service Spotify: “It’s about affairs. It’s just about how easy it is to fantasise when not being loved, for I think, both sides.”
Studies show that sugary drinks are the main culprits in childhood obesity
New research powerfully strengthens the case against soda and other sugary drinks as culprits in the obesity epidemic.
A huge, decades-long study involving more than 33,000 Americans has yielded the first clear proof that drinking sugary beverages interacts with genes that affect weight, amplifying a person’s risk of obesity beyond what it would be from heredity alone.
This means that such drinks are especially harmful to people with genes that predispose them to weight gain. And most of us have at least some of these genes.
In addition, two other major experiments have found that giving children and teens calorie-free alternatives to the sugary drinks they usually consume leads to less weight gain.
Collectively, the results strongly suggest that sugary drinks cause people to pack on the pounds, independent of other unhealthy behaviour such as overeating and getting too little exercise, scientists say.
That adds weight to the push for taxes, portion limits like the one just adopted in New York City, and other policies to curb consumption of soda, juice drinks and sports beverages sweetened with sugar.
Soda lovers do get some good news: Sugar-free drinks did not raise the risk of obesity in these studies.
“You may be able to fool the taste” and satisfy a sweet tooth without paying a price in weight, said an obesity researcher with no role in the studies, Rudy Leibel of Columbia University.
The studies were being presented Friday at an obesity conference in San Antonio and were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
The gene research in particular fills a major gap in what we know about obesity. It was a huge undertaking, involving three long-running studies that separately and collectively reached the same conclusions. It shows how behaviour combines with heredity to affect how fat we become.
Having many of these genes does not guarantee people will become obese, but if they drink a lot of sugary beverages, “they fulfil that fate,” said an expert with no role in the research, Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University in New York. “The sweet drinking and the fatness are going together, and it’s more evident in the genetic predisposition people.”
Sugary drinks are the single biggest source of calories in the American diet, and they are increasingly blamed for the fact that a third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.
Consumption of sugary drinks and obesity rates have risen in tandem — both have more than doubled since the 1970s in the U.S.
But that doesn’t prove that these drinks cause obesity. Genes, inactivity and eating fatty foods or just too much food also play a role. Also, diet research on children is especially tough because kids are growing and naturally gaining weight.
Until now, high-quality experiments have not conclusively shown that reducing sugary beverages would lower weight or body fat, said David Allison, a biostatistician who has done beverage research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, some of it with industry support.
He said the new studies on children changed his mind and convinced him that limiting sweet drinks can make a difference.
In one study, researchers randomly assigned 224 overweight or obese high schoolers in the Boston area to receive shipments every two weeks of either the sugary drinks they usually consumed or sugar-free alternatives, including bottled water. No efforts were made to change the youngsters’ exercise habits or give nutrition advice, and the kids knew what type of beverages they were getting.
After one year, the sugar-free group weighed more than 4 pounds less on average than those who kept drinking sugary beverages.
“I know of no other single food product whose elimination can produce this degree of weight change,” said the study’s leader, Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health.
The weight difference between the two groups narrowed to 2 pounds in the second year of the study, when drinks were no longer being provided. That showed at least some lasting beneficial effect on kids’ habits. The study was funded mostly by government grants.
A second study involved 641 normal-weight children ages 4 to 12 in the Netherlands who regularly drank sugar-sweetened beverages. They were randomly assigned to get either a sugary drink or a sugar-free one during morning break at their schools, and were not told what kind they were given.
After 18 months, the sugary-drink group weighed 2 pounds more on average than the other group.
The studies “provide strong impetus” for policies urged by the Institute of Medicine, the American Heart Association and others to limit sugary drink consumption, Dr. Sonia Caprino of the Yale School of Medicine wrote in an editorial in the journal.
The American Beverage Association disagreed.
“Obesity is not uniquely caused by any single food or beverage,” it said in a statement. “Studies and opinion pieces that focus solely on sugar-sweetened beverages, or any other single source of calories, do nothing meaningful to help address this serious issue.”
The genetic research was part of a much larger set of health studies that have gone on for decades across the U.S., led by the Harvard School of Public Health.
Researchers checked for 32 gene variants that have previously been tied to weight. Because we inherit two copies of each gene, everyone has 64 opportunities for these risk genes. The study participants had 29 on average.
Every four years, these people answered detailed surveys about their eating and drinking habits as well as things like smoking and exercise. Researchers analyzed these over several decades.
A clear pattern emerged: The more sugary drinks someone consumed, the greater the impact of the genes on the person’s weight and risk of becoming obese.
For every 10 risk genes someone had, the risk of obesity rose in proportion to how many sweet drinks the person regularly consumed. Overall calorie intake and lifestyle factors such as exercise did not account for the differences researchers saw.
This means that people with genes that predispose them to be obese are more susceptible to the harmful effects of sugary drinks on their weight, said one of the study leaders, Harvard’s Dr. Frank Hu. The opposite also was true — avoiding these drinks can minimize the effect of obesity genes.
“Two bad things can act together and their combined effects are even greater than either effect alone,” Hu said. “The flip side of this is everyone has some genetic risk of obesity, but the genetic effects can be offset by healthier beverage choices. It’s certainly not our destiny” to be fat, even if we carry genes that raise this risk.
The study was funded mostly by federal grants, with support from two drug companies for the genetic analysis.
What Arctic Foxes Know About Global Warming
This week probably saw the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice reach its minimum extent for the year and begin to expand again, as it usually does in mid-September. Given that the retreat of Arctic ice has become a key piece of evidence for those who take a more alarmed view of global warming, it’s newsworthy that 2012′s melt was the greatest since records began in 1979, with sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere shrinking to about 1.3 million square miles, or about half the 1979-2008 average.
As this column has sometimes pointed out ways in which the effects of global warming are happening more slowly than predicted, it is fair to record that this rate of decline in Arctic sea ice is faster than many predicted. Although an entirely ice-free Arctic Ocean during at least one week a year is still several decades away at this rate, we are halfway there after just three decades.
Another study, by Jørgen Berge and colleagues from the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, and other institutions, discovered a downward migration of egg-carrying amphipod crustaceans that enables them to recolonize Arctic ice from ice-free areas using deep currents. They say this implies that some animals are well adapted to the seasonal loss of ice.
In the Holocene Optimum there was no collapse of the polar-bear population or “point of no return.” The extent of Arctic summer sea ice then increased steadily, reaching a maximum during the very recent so-called Little Ice Age of 1500-1850. Potential confirmation that this was an unusually icy epoch comes from a newly published study by Durham University (in Britain) of the genetics of Arctic foxes on Iceland.
Greger Larson and his colleagues found that the remains of 17 Arctic foxes in Iceland from the ninth to the 12th centuries shared a single genetic signature, while the modern Icelandic fox population has five different genetic types. During the cold centuries, they infer, genetically diverse Arctic foxes from the Eurasian continent apparently reached Iceland via sea ice.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the extent of summer Arctic sea ice then shrank after 1850, before expanding in the 1960s. Clearly, the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice is both more variable and more vulnerable to warming than expected. But is the current rapid retreat caused only by warming? At least some of it might be caused by soot from dirty, coal-fired power stations. Some scientists have noticed that the decline in Arctic sea ice correlates better with the rapid growth of coal consumption in China than it does with global temperature. As the argument goes: Soot falling on white ice darkens it, which results in faster melting in summer sun.
Correlation does not always mean causation, but if soot is contributing to sea-ice melt, then it is moderately good news, because cleaning up soot emissions from power stations could be both cheaper and quicker than cutting carbon-dioxide emissions.
There’s also the puzzling fact that Antarctic sea ice shows no sign of summer retreat, and the current winter’s peak extent is well above average. The sea-dominated Southern Hemisphere is certainly warming more slowly than the land-dominated Northern Hemisphere, but it has still been warming. If warming is supposed to be “global,” shouldn’t sea ice retreat at both ends of the world?
No comments:
Post a Comment