George Lee + RTE

TimmyTarmac

Anyone have any views on how RTE should play the return of G Lee to the organisation? What's done is done in respect of his contentious exit of Irish politics and he is entitled to some job back in RTE. But what? Would he have any credibility in any role on air or editorial at the State Broadcaster or will he become the best paid Post Room employee ever?
Maybe Winning Streak could use him for a couple of years of 'decontamination' before he heads back to News.

FlutterinBantam

Backroom boy is the best he can hope for.

Far as I am concerned Mr. Tarmac, he has zero Z E R O credibility on matters of Govt. and if RTE stuck him on as a commentator, the Flutther would zap the prog quicker than a mouse chewing on a bit of gorgonzola tied to a trap pressure plate.

Whoever said he made an idiot out of himself is dead right, i don't buy this moral courage and rectitude at all.

Georgie was 'found out' , in this posters opinion.

Very easy to spout stuff backed up by the full backing of the Montrose back up machine, a little different when you are out there in the big bad world on your own.

As we say in Gridiron football, you have to be able to catch the ball between the hash marks, where the big hits come in, not out on the edges with the light lads;)

iamskippy

When he was there he was complaining there were things he was not allowed say. Will he be allowed report them now?

mrjoneill

Yes yes what will RTE do with the very public face of public broadcasting and I may add a man with his finger on the economic pulse of the nation. He indeed has being shown to have not his finger on the political pulse of the nation and was totally at sea when he dabbled his right foot in its political waters. His humiliation abandonment of party politics is not only an embarrassment but a humiliation for all concerned chiefly for himself. I cannot think of any other public broadcaster who has lost such face in the process and that is on a long list of such broadcasters that in some way affiliated or became press spokesmen for political parties.
For his future I don’t see what role he can play especially after the dizzy height he once played as the doyen of economic matters of the nation. One may well ask how can such an individual at the peak of his profession be so political and publically knave and how could he be taken seriously ever again on any matter he may report on.

imme

John Murray and Sean Duignan both returned to RTÉ after working for pol parties.
I think Lee is slightly different. Murray and Duignan worked in the background (not so much Duignan who was Head of Govt Press Service), they didn't create policy they were purely mouth-pieces. Lee was involved in policy or could have been if he'd stuck around in FG.

What can they do with him, send him to replace Bird in the States?

mrjoneill

Yes Murray and Duignan are two different fish all together and it could be argued were not tainted by party politics as they were just doing a PR job. And if one is to look at the careers of these their stint in party politics did not damage their reputations and there was no naivety in their party political activity either. Put they were never again allowed within RTE the full reign of political comment which they had prior to entering the political fray. There was also of RTE Ted Nealon and David Thornley . Ted made his bed in FG and slept in it as for Thornley his untimely death and his maverick politics made him an unlikely political hack and he was driven by left wing cause than politics which largely leaves one untainted of political bias
So from this is it not what is RTE going to do with George rather than George going to do in RTE.

imme

mrjoneill wrote: »

Yes Murray and Duignan are two different fish all together and it could be argued were not tainted by party politics as they were just doing a PR job. And if one is to look at the careers of these their stint in party politics did not damage their reputations and there was no naivety in their party political activity either. Put they were never again allowed within RTE the full reign of political comment which they had prior to entering the political fray. There was also of RTE Ted Nealon and David Thornley . Ted made his bed in FG and slept in it as for Thornley his untimely death and his maverick politics made him an unlikely political hack and he was driven by left wing cause than politics which largely leaves one untainted of political bias
So from this is it not what is RTE going to do with George rather than George going to do in RTE.

Murray didn't have a senior role in RTE before he left for the PD's.

Duignan was a govt mouthpiece being Head of the Govt Press Service for Albert Reynolds. Prior to leaving RTE Duignan had been presenter of the Six-One News. Hardly the pinnacle of journalistic achievement. When Duignan came back to RTE he went back to news presentation. After a few years he went on to The Week In Politics.

mrjoneill

Sean Murray was a senior frontline journalist in RTE and worked in their premier news slots including presenting the Morning Ireland programme. After his quasi political sojourn his return to RTE saw him in business related programmes.
Another figure not mentioned is Shane Kenny who also went quasi political and ended up like Murray in the business end of RTE programmes.

FlutterinBantam

Sean Murray

never heard of him?