Controversy
50,000 Secret Journeys in which three women who had abortions tell their stories intercut with news clips recounting recent events in the ongoing legal struggle between pro and anti abortion campaigners was pulled from the RTE schedule on 29 March 1994. The decision provoked a strong protest from the station’s film-makers. The Tuesday File film "50,000 Secret Journeys" was to be screened after the main evening news. A statement issued by SIPTU on behalf of the TV producer/director and director grades regretted the decision of Director of Television not to broadcast the programme. “It’s a matter of serious concern to TV producers and directors that such a programme should be deemed unsuitable for inclusion in one of RTE’s main current affairs programmes,” it said. An RTE spokesperson said the decision had been taken “for internal RTE reasons which we don’t want to go into.” The documentary was eventually screened on RTE on 27th Oct 1994 at a later time and was followed by a studio debate on abortion in Ireland chaired by Marian Finucane.
Read more about this topic: Fintan Connolly
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)