'THERE simply wasn't time to check the authenticity of the tweet before mentioning it on air," Peter Feeney, the Head of Broadcast Compliance at RTE, has said in a detailed reply to a viewer from Cork of the controversial Frontline presidential debate on October 24 last.

There simply wasn't time?

By any yardstick, this is an extraordinary admission for the national broadcaster to make -- extraordinary and inaccurate -- but even that admission is not the most extraordinary in Feeney's reply, dated December 20 last, which has been seen by the Sunday Independent.

The compliance committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland will meet on Tuesday, February 28, to consider a complaint brought by Sean Gallagher, and others, in relation to the controversial Frontline programme.

Analysis of Feeney's reply to the viewer from Cork indicates that RTE has a more serious case to answer than many may have realised to date.

There is every indication, however, that RTE by now realises that it is in a difficult position on this issue, as a letter last week by Feeney to The Irish Times illustrates.

That letter was in response to a disclosure by the newspaper that Morgan Fuels, the company of convicted fuel smuggler, Hugh Morgan, had received almost €3,000 from Martin McGuinness during the presidential election campaign.

The sum is said to relate to payment for fuel for the campaign bus of McGuinness, a former Provisional IRA leader, who was the Sinn Fein candidate in the presidential election.

In his letter to The Irish Times, Feeney, among other things, said that the information contained in what was a bogus tweet "was essentially accurate".

This must amount to another extraordinary claim.

In his reply to the viewer from Cork's complaint, Feeney elaborates on his contention that the content of the bogus tweet was essentially accurate.

His elaboration, basically, boils down to this: RTE is relying on the word of a convicted fuel smuggler to defend its broadcast of a bogus tweet which effectively dictated who would be the Head of State for the next seven years.

As Feeney also implies in his reply to the Cork viewer "context" is everything. So here is the context.

This was no ordinary tweet. This was the tweet which, as it turned out, had a massive bearing on who would be the President of Ireland.

At 10.39pm, the tweet was posted to a Twitter feed "#aras11". The Twitter account responsible was "@mcguinness4Pres".

It read: "The man that Gallagher took the cheque from will be at a press conference tomorrow. #aras11."

Earlier in the debate, certain matters had been put to Gallagher in relation to his involvement three years earlier in a legitimate fundraising event for Fianna Fail.

In particular, McGuinness claimed that Gallagher had called to Hugh Morgan's house to collect a cheque for €5,000.

The debate had moved on from the issue by the time of the first commercial break at 10.13pm.

At 10.43pm, there was a second commercial break, which lasted five minutes and six seconds. On return from that break, at approximately 10.49pm, the presenter, Pat Kenny, put the following to Gallagher:

"Now, a development, which I want to put to Sean Gallagher. On the 'Martin McGuinness for president' Twitter account, Sinn Fein are saying they are going to produce the man who gave you the cheque for five grand. Now, do you want to change what you said or are you still saying that it just simply didn't happen? Are they up to dirty tricks or what?"

What Gallagher had said earlier was just that -- it simply didn't happen. But that is not the immediate point.

The immediate point is that 10 minutes had elapsed between the posting of the bogus tweet and its broadcast by RTE. Yet Feeney claims that there "simply wasn't time" to check the authenticity of the tweet before it was put to Gallagher.

Let us remember that, on the RTE studio floor that night, and in the Green Room, there were several Sinn Fein officials who could have verified the claim that they were going to "produce" Morgan at a press conference the following day.

But even that basic verification was not necessarily required, as it turned out -- and here's why:

At 11.02pm, still during the course of the debate, there was a corrective tweet from the official McGuinness campaign account, which read: "As official campaign twitter for Martin, we need to point out that we have made no comment on the Gallagher FF donation issue #aras11#rtefl".

Sinn Fein, therefore, had officially corrected the record, the import of which was this: the convicted fuel smuggler would not be produced at a press conference the following day where he would have been closely examined on his claim.

Which brings us to another extraordinary admission by Feeney in his reply to the viewer from Cork.

"During the course of the debate the production team was monitoring social media coverage of the debate," he said.

It is, therefore, surely beyond doubt that the Frontline production team would have been aware of the corrective Sinn Fein tweet which, remember, was not only tweeted to #aras11 but also to #rtefl.

But a full 26 minutes passed to the end of the programme and still RTE did not refer to the corrective tweet.

The significance of this cannot be overstated.

If RTE had referred to the corrective tweet it would have helped to immediately calm a by then feverish atmosphere; it would also have allowed Gallagher an opportunity to return to an issue that was about to scupper his, until then, successful campaign.

More than that, it would also have allowed the presenter, Pat Kenny, an opportunity to question McGuinness on the issue.

For whatever reason, Kenny had failed to take this opportunity throughout the programme, even though he had earlier alluded to the possibility of Sinn Fein dirty tricks.

As Feeney put it, "context" is everything.

Let us recall, then, the context within which RTE had pitched what was the final debate of the campaign: it could be, Kenny said, a possible "game-changer".

That is, Gallagher was the clear front-runner at the time. RTE was, therefore, hinting that Frontline may be about to change all of that, a "game", no less, to decide who would be President of Ireland.

The day after the broadcast, Fianna Fail issued a statement which contradicted, in a most obvious way, the version of events as offered by McGuinness during the debate.

It turned out that the cheque from Morgan to Fianna Fail was received, and lodged, before the fundraising in Dundalk referred to took place.

Therefore, Gallagher could not have gone to Morgan after the event to take receipt of the cheque and to present him with a photograph as McGuinness had claimed live on air, having -- as he said -- just two hours earlier spoken to Morgan.

The atmosphere was still feverish, however. Voters were going to the polls within hours. So nobody felt inclined to closely examine the word of a convicted fuel-smuggler.

Nobody, that is, except Michael O'Farrell, the Investigations Editor of the Mail of Sunday, who had, by then, already closely questioned Morgan on his claims.

The week prior to the debate, O'Farrell had been contacted and provided with the details of Morgan's claims; the journalist, and his newspaper, tested the claims and elected not to publish them.

After the Frontline debate, O'Farrell returned to the subject to explain why, and to raise a red flag as to the credibility of Morgan.

O'Farrell wrote: "For example, he said that it may actually have been Fianna Fail TD Seamus Kirk who had called him with the invitation to attend the Dundalk fundraiser... and he couldn't remember details of the day Mr Gallagher collected the cheque or dropped off the photograph."

But we are now expected to believe that the convicted fuel smuggler's power of recall dramatically improved just two hours before the debate and again the following day when he issued a statement.

After polling day, when it was certain that the Labour candidate, Michael D Higgins, would win the Presidency, the Sunday Independent returned to the issue. We made contact with Seamus Kirk to ascertain his recollection of events.

Kirk said that he did not "recollect" picking up a cheque from Morgan for Fianna Fail. But he added: "I would have had contact with Hugh Morgan from time to time -- and not on behalf of Fianna Fail. I was involved in the development council for the GAA.

On the same day, the Sunday Independent reported Gallagher as saying he had by then established that he had not delivered a photograph of Morgan with the then-Taoiseach Brian Cowen to Morgan's business premises. "I left it off at the Carrickdale Hotel for him to collect," he said.

At the very least, these developments, which emerged subsequent to the 'game-changing' Frontline debate, cast serious doubt over the claims of Morgan and, by extension, of Sinn Fein.

But the RTE Head of Broadcast Compliance, as of December 20 last, was still maintaining the "essential

accuracy" of the content of the bogus tweet.

In his reply to the Cork viewer, Feeney puts it like this: "The essential information that Mr Gallagher had solicited considerable funds for Fianna Fail three years earlier has proven to be correct. The businessman at the centre of the claim, Mr Hugh Morgan, did issue a statement the following morning confirming the core claim."

As to the subsequent developments which cast doubt over Morgan's claims, Feeney, somewhat casually, tries to explain it away like this: "There was and remains some confusion about exactly when the €5,000 was donated and in what circumstances; what is not in dispute is that it happened; this has been acknowledged by Fianna Fail headquarters."

The bottom line, therefore, is that RTE intends to rely on the word of Hugh Morgan, a convicted fuel smuggler, to defend the broadcast of a bogus tweet which changed the game, as it were, which helped decide who would be President of Ireland.

Curiously, according to Feeney, it is RTE's view that the inclusion of the bogus tweet "did not impact fundamentally on the core issue being debated".

Most people would beg to differ. Gallagher, for one, certainly does.

He is now interested in finding out more of what went on behind the scenes in RTE that night.

Last November, he made a Freedom of Information request to RTE for records relating to the timing of receipt by RTE of the bogus tweet and records relating to the timing of the corrective tweet.

The request was rejected on the basis that the records might identify a source; that it concerned edited material; concerned editorial decision making in respect of the Frontline programme; and that it related to news gathering.

Gallagher has appealed the decision.

Last week he told the Sunday Independent: "I received a very hostile response to my appeal of the RTE decision to reject my Freedom of Information request.

"I must admit that I was shocked and surprised by how uncoperative, unhelpful, and even hostile, the management of RTE have been in this matter, at the very highest and most senior level."

Originally published in