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RTÉ HAS RECEIVED over 600 emails complaining about the decision to invite Katie Hopkins on The Late Late Show tomorrow night.
Hopkins, a controversial presenter and reality star from the UK, has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, and had previously promised to move to the US if he became president.
As of 7pm tonight, 641 emails have been sent to RTÉ complaining about her guest appearance on the show.
RTÉ released a statement to TheJournal.ie explaining the decision to invite Hopkins as a guest, saying that the election of Trump was a huge news story.
“Donald Trump’s victory has been one of the biggest political upsets of our time,” the statement says.
“Donald Trump himself expressed many controversial views during the campaign, and is now President-elect.”
Katie Hopkins is one of his most vocal supporters in the UK. She’ll be giving her take on why his message resonated with American voters, and her promise to move to America in the event of a Trump victory.
The American election and its aftermath has been and will continue to be covered extensively across the range of RTÉ’s output.
A campaign to send letters of complaint to RTÉ began after Katie Hopkins sent a tweet announcing her appearance.
Pre-emptive complaints
Those who sent complaints received responses from RTÉ saying that their emails wouldn’t be regarded officially as complaints “as it does not refer to a broadcast which has taken place”.
The response says:
Your email has not been entered into the RTÉ Complaints process as it does not refer to a broadcast which has taken place.
However, it has been forwarded to RTÉ Feedback, and your correspondence will be noted in the weekly diary of comment from viewers and listeners which is circulated to all senior editorial and managerial executives, including the Director-General and the Managing Director RTÉ Television.
It’s not immediately clear why complaints made before broadcast are treated differently to retrospective complaints.
The complaints
Yesterday evening, upon the announcement that Hopkins would appear on the Late Late, people began sharing pictures of the emails they were writing to the public service broadcaster.
Writing in her Daily Mail column today, Katie Hopkins welcomed the election of Donald Trump, saying that his victory had:
…crushed the lefty luvvies, useless pollsters, multicultural mafia and gender Nazis who refuse to listen to regular people. So, from a Brexiteer, thank you America.
Last month, the Council of Europe branded an infamous article by Hopkins as hate speech. In the piece, which was entitled “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”, Hopkins referred to would-be refugees as “cockroaches”.
With reporting from Órla Ryan and David Elkin.
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