Samantha Libreri
SIMON HARRIS is correct to say that contact was made with RTÉ following the Kanturk incident but it is not true that this was done merely to offer RTÉ a statement on the matter, which is an “appropriate and normal thing to do during an election campaign”.
It is also correct to say that Government handlers offer statements to the media during elections (although the innocent, charitable and democratic spirit implied in the statement is a little OTT).
However, the intent of Harris and his handlers was to downgrade and undermine the video depicting Harris as unsympathetic to the Kanturk care workers and this effort went on throughout the late afternoon and evening of that day in the run-up to the Nine O’Clock News that night.
The video was initially shot by an RTÉ cameraman working without any journalist present as Samantha Libreri, who was following the Taoiseach around the country, was delayed by the inclement weather that day.
The cameraman simply did his job by capturing the exchange between Harris and the care worker in the Kanturk shop but RTÉ and the Nine O’Clock News programmers were later told by a handler from Harris’s team that the conversation was a private one and not a proper story as no journalist was present. Some of the exchanges with RTÉ personnel were described as “testy” at one point as the gravity of the video and story began to impress itself on the Harris team.
In the event, RTÉ posted the offending video on all its social media platforms a minute or so before the Nine O’Clock News but downplayed the video on the news programme itself, waiting until after the mid-programme advertising break to break the news and video to the nation. This was perhaps a rather understated way to present a story regarded as the greatest political own goal in living memory.
Goldhawk’s efforts to ask Harris’s chief of staff, ex-Irish Times political correspondent Sarah Bardon, if she had been involved in the PR operation to undermine the story came to naught. Sarah declined to respond to two phone calls, a text message explaining the query and two voice mails doing the same.
