THE NATIONAL BROADCASTER RTÉ has defended its decision to cut the live televised feed of yesterday evening’s press conference with Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan.

The Taoiseach and Finance Minister announced that Ireland had formally applied for financial aid from the EU and IMF.

RTÉ continued to stream the event on its website, but its televised service cut from the final minutes of the press conference as TV3′s Vincent Browne questioned Cowen.

In a statement posted to its Facebook page, the broadcaster said suggestions it had cut away from Browne’s questioning for “reasons of commercial rivalry” were “far from being the case”.

Defending its coverage of the event, RTÉ said it ran “comprehensive coverage of the events surrounding the Cabinet meeting” yesterday, including “detailed analysis” on the Six One News and an extended edition of the Nine O’Clock News:

Our news special ran for half an hour and contained a number of questions from various journalists including our own, some international broadcasters and from TV3 both Ursula Halligan and Vincent Browne whose first four questions were broadcast before we returned briefly to studio for analysis and then went to the extended Nine O’Clock News.

The broadcaster said that because it was not a specialist news channel, RTÉ One had to “serve audience needs other than News”. The statement concludes: “RTÉ News is satisfied that it covered yesterday’s events fully and appropriately”.

Facebook users have criticised the RTÉ statement as a “feeble attempt” and said they had to “rely on outside coverage and broadcasts”.

Yesterday evening, Twitter users said they were watching coverage on BBC and Sky News instead of RTÉ as those stations had alerted viewers to the press conference over an hour before RTÉ sent a similar Twitter message to its followers.