Why did RTE give Haughey such an easy ride.

Published Categorized as politics

RTE after broadcasting Dohertys implication was on strike by the time CJH went in 1992. Damaged by telephones (& bugs) old guard Fianna Fail passed away in an era of strikes, Sean Doherty went on Night Hawks and to a din of noise in the background he implicated Charles Haughey in the bugging in 1982 of the phones of Journalists (one is now editor of the Irish Times). So 1992 RTE Journalists Strikes and Haughey. RTE were on strike as CJH resigned as Taoiseach. David Davin-Power was breaking the news and breaking the strike as RTE played mournful music to entertain the nation. Davin-Power took completely different advice when a year earlier Century Radio sacked him and two other journalists. Davin-Power took union advice and stayed in Century even though Century said his services were no longer wanted. He ended up in RTE breaking their strike months later. The RTE strike of ’92 lasted 6 weeks. Later in 1992 Ben Dunne doesn’t jump and the unwinding of the Haughey Million$ begins. If RTE was sticky, it was like glue with CJH, I though it so odd last june 10th on the day of transmission of episode one of the Haughey programme that not so much as a graphic was used to advertise the show, So much so I decided to blog about it here. Now you cant miss the advert on the RTE website for the Haughey DVD, well not now, Bosco is getting the extra rotation for a few days, [rotating bosco | another blog post i think] Haughey is buried in Sutton tonight about 5 minutes from where I sit.

********* stars of MP3
hear are some out takes from the era and some classic Haughey lines.

Haughey Collins Lenihan Curry Burke in MP3

thanks to tinyMCE for powering the WP with html tools

thanks to Irish Emigrant Publications for some background data in research

thanks to Shea Healy for getting Sean Doherty to speak on Night Hawks

elsewhere on haughey Emigrant.ie

“He called on us, in hard times, to don hair shirts and suffer for Ireland even while he himself was buying dozens of the most expensive silk shirts in Europe, drinking the best of wine and champagne, enjoying the company of a mistress, accepting hundreds of thousands of pounds from wealthy friends, living far beyond his means, and effectively terrorising his own party. He was an amazing rogue. And yet, after all the tribunals and investigations of his tangled financial affairs, I do not feel it has ever been convincingly and clearly proven what favours, if any, he dispensed to those, like Ben Dunne, who literally lined up to give him money. Remarkable.”

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Categorized as politics