EDITORIAL: Trust is hard-earned and easily lost...

Every crisis has a timeline. Firstly the breaking news headlines, next the public outrage, and then people cool down and get bored. Finally, lessons are learned.

I think perhaps we are coming to the boredom phase of the RTÉ pay scandal. People are a bit sick of it, and the argument seems to revolve around wasn’t it a matter of ads revenue anyway? Well, not really.

It’s true that in media, advertisement supports news and entertainment. But equally, without news and entertainment, nobody would watch the ads.

So, for the national broadcaster, ad revenue and licence fees are not independent of one another. €160 is a lot of money, and right now, there is a lot of hardship in households around the country.

If you choose to spend that money elsewhere on food, electricity or school supplies, there will be consequences. RTE is not Netflix, and you are not a customer; you are a stakeholder. If you don’t meet your obligations, you can be fined up to €1,000 for a first offence and €2,000 for a second.

Last Friday, the Irish Examiner reported 159 people were before Dublin District Court for not paying their licence fee. The presiding judge said he was “disgusted and appalled” by what was going on at RTÉ.

But can you imagine travelling to your court date listening to commentary about RTÉ on the radio?

There is no doubt we need a public broadcaster, and that will have to be funded by both the taxpayer and private business. But there is just no point if you can’t trust that taxpayer money is being used responsibly.

Journalists at RTÉ who have suffered pay cuts and reduced resources are rightly devastated by this. And we know RTÉ know the value of those resources because they have used them to justify the introduction of a media fee for years.

Everyone who faces a crisis or scandal promises to regain public trust. But trust isn’t something you drop and pick back up again when the fun money runs out.