Would it have made a twitter of a difference?

WHY are so many people getting their knickers in a knot over that bogus tweet to RTÉ’s Frontline programme prior to the general election last year?
What’s the big deal anyway is the question I have been asking myself so often over the past week and failing to find an answer. Like a lot of people in this country, I hardly know the difference between a twit and a tweet.  Does it make a twitter of a difference?
RTÉ was certainly wrong in not checking  the veracity of the tweet which claimed Sinn Féin were going to produce the man who allegedly gave presidential candidate Sean Gallagher a €5,000 cheque for Fianna Fáil.  The station was also wrong for not disclosing a further tweet from Sinn Féin which denied the first tweet.  For that they were rightly reprimanded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
Now RTÉ has to answer further charges that the audience was manipulated in the final debate of the presidential campaign. RTÉ sacrificed accuracy for drama in relation to the tweet controversy, but anyone involved in the media can understand how that might happen under pressure. It should not happen but it has happened many times before and it will happen again.
The newspaper that has been to the fore in attacking RTÉ at the weekend was caught out itself a few years ago when, under pressure, it failed to verify that the woman who accompanied the late Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor in that fatal car crash in Moscow was not, as it reported, a prostitute, but was working as a translator.
That was a far more serious lapse of judgement than the one RTÉ was guilty of last October. The paper in question paid dearly for its mistake.
There is no question about it but RTÉ was wrong and should try and ensure this does not happen again, no matter what the pressure. 
With regard to the other question about the alleged manipulation of audiences, I am told this is common practice, especially in making live programmes.  Studio audiences and guests need to be tutored and guided into asking the relevant questions and making sharp and precise comments in order to keep the programme lively.  What you see and hear watching TV in the comfort of your own living room is never as spontaneous as you might think it is.
I agree with the comments made by broadcaster Vincent Browne at the weekend that RTÉ has a lot more to worry about than the question about the bogus tweet.  Morale at the station is at an all-time low, advertising  has collapsed and the handling of the Fr Kevin Reynolds case was disgraceful.  Fr  Reynolds, you will remember, was the priest who was seriously libelled by RTÉ in a Prime Time Investigates programme.  The full repercussions of that case have still to be felt.
While the Frontline programme prior to the presidential election was unfair to Sean Gallagher, it did not libel him. While the tweet was bogus, the fact is that without it we might never have realised the full extent of Mr Gallagher’s connections to Fianna Fáil.
There was nothing wrong with Mr Gallagher collecting a donation on behalf of Fianna Fáil but he had been at pains trying to put distance between himself and Fianna Fáil.  What brought Mr Gallagher down was not so much the bogus tweet but the way he handled the situation.
He should have been up front admitting he had been a bag handler for Fianna Fáil, but that all that was now in the past.  However, he wanted to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.  He wanted to keep the Fianna Fáil support while at the same time appearing as an independent candidate. He fell between the two stools.
He showed that he couldn’t be trusted with the highest office in the land. 
There is no certainty that Mr Gallagher would have won the contest but for that Frontline disclosure. The latest opinion polls had shown he had a clear lead over Michael D Higgins who, in turn, was well ahead of Martin McGuinness with the other candidates out of the running.
It was clear to everyone that there were only two candidates in the race – Gallagher and Higgins. I believe that the majority of those who might have supported, say, McGuinness, or Gay Mitchell or David Norris, switched their vote to Higgins.  Their second choice became their first choice.  That’s my theory anyway and nobody can say with certainty that I am wrong or right.
The point is that a lot of people felt at that stage that a vote for any candidate outside of the top two would be wasted.  Obviously, more of them preferred Higgins to Gallagher.  To what extent the bogus tweet  or Gallagher’s reaction to it influenced their decision is a matter for conjecture.
I don’t know how many more enquiries into the whole affair are still to be conducted.  There are a lot of people out there – in politics and especially in other media – who want to knock RTÉ at every opportunity and see the Frontline programme as another weapon in their armoury.
RTÉ, and especially RTÉ Television, has had an ongoing love/hate relationship with politicians, churchmen, trade unionists, farmers, sports people and other interest groups since its foundation.
It has always had a somewhat fractious relationship with whatever party or parties happened to be in government. Since the party most often in power happened to be Fianna Fáil, RTÉ’s relationship with that party seldom was a happy one. 
Seán Lemass believed RTÉ should be an instrument of government – in other words an instrument of Fianna Fáil.  A Fianna Fáil government once sacked the whole RTÉ Authority because that body would not do its bidding.
Fianna Fáil was  always suspicious of certain RTÉ celebrities whom they hinted had hidden subversive agendas.
Even  today in Opposition, Fianna Fáil believes RTÉ carries  distinct anti-Fianna Fáil sympathies and that was the real reason for the alleged bias against Gallagher in the Frontline programme.