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The Irish left (media)

Introduction

For others below, it's not so much open anti-Americanism as just general negativity - endless carping and criticism of America, Britain and Israel (the three countries that have leadership or frontier roles in the defence of western liberal civilization). These journalists believe it is the duty of a journalist to be slyly cynical and negative about everything the government does.

• Opponents of the west in Ireland

• Problems with the western media - Refusal to ever praise the west.

There is some merit in this, of course, but it is not the same thing as a dispassionate search for truth. In particular, if you feel that the government is doing something far more idealistic, noble and heroic than anything the media have ever done in their lives, then the media's endless negativity is hard to take. For anyone who cares about the War on Islamism, much of this commentary is just tedious, pointless and demoralising to listen to. It is the criticism of people who don't seem to care, who don't seem to really want the west to win. It is the negative criticism of enemies and neutrals, who wish you ill, rather than the positive criticism of friends.

• Orwell sums up why it is hard to listen to people like this.
• It is possible to criticise while still basically backing the west, as people like Ralph Peters, Michael Ledeen, and Cox and Forkum show. In contrast, none of the people below are clearly on the side of the west.
• Why we must never abandon this historic struggle in Iraq, by Tony Blair, April 11, 2004, The Observer - sums up how I see the cynical, negative, whining media in this age when the governments they criticise are being heroic, noble and idealistic: "The truth is, faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find."
• High Bias - Orson Scott Card on why it is difficult to listen to people like RTE and the Irish Times at a time like this: "When a nation is at war .. we don't want to hear the news from neutral parties. We want the news to be accurate, yes ... But when a negative story comes out, we want the people telling us the news to say it with regret. And when America wins, we want our news media to tell us with excitement and happiness. In other words, we want to hear the truth from a friend. From someone who is one of us." Not from someone, like RTE and the Irish Times, who is neutral or hostile.

Newspapers

The Irish Times

• Fintan O'Toole

• Eddie Holt
  • Eddie Holt - The archetypal left-wing response to Sept 11th

• Lara Marlowe
  • See blog-irish (and here and here).
  • Jon Ihle

• Michael Jansen (female)
  • Richard Waghorne on Michael Jansen's inability to celebrate the killing of Zarqawi. A simple headline: "America kills leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq" would have done. But no, the headline had to be: "Fears killing may lead to retaliatory attacks". But of course.
  • See blog-irish.

• Martyn Turner
• Deaglan de Breadun
• Peter Murtagh
• Anthony Glavin
• Bill McSweeney

• Ian Kilroy
  • Kilroy compares the US with the Soviet Union, and its free press with Pravda - in a recurring theme with him. As if people like him were opposed to the Soviets when the Soviet threat was real.
  • Irishman travels to US, comes back with suitcase full of cliches - Jon Ihle on Ian Kilroy's letters from America. "It's just been an endless stream of reductive, condescending crap from start to finish: credulous about those who share his prejudices and incurious about those who don't. ... Good riddance."

• Mary Fitzgerald - Islamist propaganda every Friday in the Irish Times, summer 2006.
  • For some reason, the Irish Times is printing an endless series of bland, pious whitewashes of Islam, Islamic history, Islamic teaching, Islamic clerics and Islamic organisations. Just as they do not understand the neo-cons, so the Irish Times reader does not understand the jihad. And this bland, politically-correct spin will keep them that way.
  • If you really want to understand the jihad, and understand the currents in Islam that have led to modern Islamist terror, you need to read sites like LGF and MEMRI, which have for years been casting a cold, unflinching eye on uncomfortable reality:
    • Friday Sermons in Mecca's main mosque
    • Friday Sermons in the Palestinian Authority
    • Friday Sermons in Gaza
    • Friday Sermons in mosques around the Islamic world (and here and here)
    • The "moderate" Al-Azhar mosque, Cairo (and here), one of the most important mosques in Islam.
    • The "moderate" Yusuf Al-Qaradawi
    • The "moderate" Iraqi cleric Ali al-Sistani
    • The "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood
    • "Moderate" Muslims in the world

• Tony Allwright on a classic example of media bias in a Mary Fitzgerald article on Al Jazeera: "she contrasts it with the "rabidly right-wing" Fox News and the "sombre, earnest and careful" BBC. Why does she omit the epithet "left-wing" from the BBC's description, being its most abiding characteristic?"

• Why reading The Irish Times makes me annoyed:
  • Richard Waghorne notes three typical references to "neo-cons" in one short period in The Irish Times in 2005, by Fintan O'Toole, Anthony Glavin and Eddie Holt - three men who show no sign of ever actually understanding what neo-cons are. To them, "neo-con" is simply "evil", their understanding seeming to come from Chomskyite fantasy like The Power of Nightmares and similar ill-informed third-hand sources. They, like the rest of the Irish left, show no sign of ever having read neo-conservative writers like Victor Davis Hanson to see what they say.
  • I wouldn't mind so much if Fintan O'Toole and Eddie Holt read Victor Davis Hanson and then told us what was wrong with him. But they never even engage with him. Holt will criticise irrelevant people like Pat Robertson who nobody is interested in. Why doesn't he read serious, influential neo-cons like Victor Davis Hanson and then reply? As Richard Waghorne says in the post above: "The consistent problem is a refusal .. to engage with neo-conservativism as a philosophy".
  • Neo-cons, in one line, are people who want to end all dictatorships on earth, by force if necessary. It's a very appealing philosophy to me, far more appealing than the left-wing alternative. Now you can argue that it is naive, or impossible, or will involve too much war, or will make things worse, or is not our problem, or is cultural imperialism, or that third world people don't want democracy and human rights. That's fine. But at least then you're engaging with what neo-conservativism actually is. That's all I ask of the left and of people like Richard Dawkins. Read the neo-conservatives and tell us why they are wrong. I regularly read your ill-informed nonsense, as this post proves. Why don't you return the favour and read our side and tell us why it is wrong?
  • The Eddie Holt Award - "for egregious abuse of the term neoconservative".

• Why I love blogs and the Internet:
  • So over breakfast I read some rubbish about America by the novelist Colum McCann in the Irish Times. It makes me mad that anyone could write such nonsense.
  • But instead of just grumping, the very same day I can read Richard Waghorne's thorough fisking of McCann on his blog. Ah, now I feel better. I just love the Internet!
  • Waghorne brilliantly notes that McCann is slagging off American soldiers at Shannon, and putting words in their mouth, but: "It's noticeable that ... McCann doesn't bother to actually ask the soldiers what they think."

• My favourite Tony Allwright letter to the Irish Times, that they did not publish: "Madam, James Hyde states that "many thousands of us (the people) keep making it clear we are against our Government's support of America's war in Iraq". No doubt this is true, but is it not a sad indictment on such people?"
• "Attacks on Israeli Civilians Counters Military Raid" - How the Irish Times should, but never will, title their news stories.

Other newspapers

• Sunday Tribune and Sunday Business Post
  • Matt Cooper
  • Damien Kiberd
  • Diarmuid Doyle
  • Marion McKeone

  • Tom McGurk

  • Vincent Browne

  • The Sunday Business Post must be the weirdest newspaper in Ireland. It pulls off the unique feat of managing to be pro-capitalist and yet anti-American, anti-British and anti-Israeli. It's like a bunch of lefties who have finally realised that socialism doesn't work, but don't yet realise that all their other beliefs are wrong too.

• Sunday Independent
  • Gene Kerrigan
    • Gene Kerrigan's Echo-Chamber by Richard Waghorne

• Village
  • Village is all left-wing, all pro-republican. A highbrow version of Phoenix. Or a left-wing, pro-republican version of Magill.
  • Marion McKeone
  • Colum McCann
  • Chekov Feeney
  • Gerry Adams

  • Vincent Browne

  • Harry Browne
    • "International law confers the right to take arms against foreign occupation. ... Of course Iraqi resistance people have committed terrorist acts, but so has the United States" - Harry Browne, Village, 23-29 Dec 2004, on the Iraqi fascist "resistance" that is fighting to prevent democracy being set up in Iraq.
    • What is the Iraqi "resistance"?

• Phoenix
  • Phoenix is all anonymous, and it's all left-wing and republican. To be taken seriously only if you agree with that kind of thing.
  • Phoenix is famous for portraying Minister for Justice Michael McDowell as a "Nazi". What an example of "Freudian Projection". McDowell is of course the principal opponent of extreme nationalist fascism and organised crime in Ireland. While the republicans that Phoenix is so sympathetic to are the only people in Ireland who actually supported the Nazis.

• Hot Press
  • Eamonn McCann

• The Guardian
  • Fiachra Gibbons
    • See this dreadful article (or via here) on the suicide bombing of Jewish women and children in Turkey by Islamofascists. It is a half-apology for the Islamofascists. And it is Israel, of course, that is really to blame.
    • See replies here and here and here and here.

• Non-Irish opponents of the west appear regularly in the Irish media. At least, far more regularly than non-Irish defenders of the west. For instance, I have seen the anti-American, anti-Israeli polemicists Robert Fisk and John Pilger a hundred times in the Irish press. I have never seen Victor Davis Hanson even once.

• The leftist's view of the Irish media:
  • Harry Browne on the Irish media, The Dubliner, May 2006 (see image), gives an alternative, leftie view.
  • The article lists the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Evening Herald and the Sunday Tribune as right of centre!
  • The article lists the Sunday Business Post as centrist!
  • The article lists Eamon Dunphy as right of centre!
  • Well, some people really do live on different planets.
  • Interestingly, this leftie analysis agrees that RTE Radio and Newstalk 106 are both left-wing, perhaps explaining why I can't stand radio in Ireland. There is much less diversity in radio than in newspapers.

  • Bizarrely, Harry Browne thinks the Irish Times would sell more if it was more left-wing! The opposite is true for me. I don't buy it, since 9/11, because it is so left-wing. I wish there was a quality, pro-American, non-left-wing Irish daily. I would buy it all the time. As it is, I tend to buy British newspapers, and read American and Israeli news online, since there is no non-left-wing Irish daily newspaper.

Radio and TV

State radio and TV (RTE)

• Carole Coleman
• Mark Little
• Richard Crowley

• Tom McGurk

• Vincent Browne

• Richard Downes
  • Richard Downes is typical of the left's opposition to the neo-conservative dreams of bringing democracy to the Arab world. He has written an entire book on Iraq, and yet he has no constructive suggestion for what should be done next. All we know is that, whatever is done, Richard Downes will criticise it. Question: "What do you think is the solution to the war in Iraq?" Richard Downes: "There is no solution. At least there's no solution that is quick and doesn't involve yet more disruption and loss of life. The decision to invade Iraq is the key event in all of this. It is like they have made an omelette and now we want the eggs back. But what is happening in Iraq is impossible to reverse. What we are seeing now has a long way to run and the Iraqis are the victims of this."
  • I'm sure that gives him a sense of moral superiority, but: (1) it doesn't tell us what to do next, and: (2) it seems to blame the people with good intentions, when of course the people with wicked intentions - the Islamists - are responsible for all the death and destruction since liberation. Why not blame the evil Islamists trying to stop democracy? Are they not moral agents? Are they mere animals?
  • He reminds me of Orwell's criticism of the left in WW2: "their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion."
  • It never occurs to Richard Downes, for example, that people like him, and books like his, encourage the jihad to keep fighting.

• Classic example of RTE bias: Richard Crowley, 18 July 2006, reports that 81% of Israelis support their government's actions in Lebanon, but then RTE do not interview any of them. Instead they extensively interview the 17% who don't.
  • They even feature a crackpot unveiled Israeli Arab young woman (Abir Kopty, Center for Arab Citizens of Israel) who praises Iranian Hezbollah for "liberating" South Lebanon. The irony of having bare shoulders and praising "liberated" Hezbollah-controlled, sharia-friendly South Lebanon seems to escape her. Of course, she lives in Israel.
  • I don't mind them interviewing minority nutjobs like this, so long as they interview the sane majority as well. But to exclude them totally.
  • Richard Crowley clearly has contempt for the majority view in Israel, as shown by not interviewing them, and also by his language: "The opinion poll suggests support for the government's policy in Lebanon is still very strong", he says patronisingly. Very subtle. It indicates that there is something wrong or provisional with this support, that it must be only temporary. It's like a Socialist Workers Party member saying "Polls suggest support for bourgeois democracy is still very strong". Why are the Israelis so stupid that they still don't agree with comfortable Irish lefties? Surely they will see sense and catch up with the advanced mind of Richard Crowley some day. What's wrong with saying "is very strong" and just reporting the facts?

• Pat Kenny interview of the fanatical Islamist-lover, tyranny-lover and Al Qaeda favourite, George Galloway, RTE, 29 September 2006.
  • No hard questions about Galloway's endless statements in support of the violent enemies of the West.
  • Though at least Pat Kenny allows Eamon Delaney of Magill to provide a lone voice of sanity.

• There is very little diversity on state radio and TV in Ireland. Some people are clearly anti-American and anti-west. Many others are just endlessly negative and critical. Nobody is clearly pro-west.

Private radio and TV

• Matt Cooper

• Fintan O'Toole

• David Norris

• Eamon Dunphy, fan of Robert Fisk.
  • Eamon Dunphy epitomises the failure of private media to provide diversity. He is (or was) the most prominent "alternative" to RTE's endless diet of leftie anti-Americanism. So what does he provide? An endless diet of leftie anti-Americanism.
  • Fighting the war from a radio studio, 11 Nov 2001 - George Dempsey on the "military experts" Eamon Dunphy and Fintan O'Toole.

• There is very little diversity on private radio and TV in Ireland. Some people are clearly anti-American and anti-west. Many others are just endlessly negative and critical. Nobody is clearly pro-west.
• The problem with private radio in Ireland is it's just the same stuff as state radio. Unlike in the US - where private-sector talk-radio provides diversity to counteract the anti-West line of state-supported radio - in Ireland private radio simply parrots the same line as state radio.

Carole Coleman's RTE interview of Bush, June 2004

• Carole Coleman's sneering RTE interview of President Bush before his visit to Ireland, June 2004, perfectly encapsulates RTE's institutional anti-Americanism.
  • See full transcript.

• The appalling Coleman has been on my TV screen throughout the War on Terror, endlessly sneering at Bush, and constantly negative about everything America does. Her distaste and contempt for Bush has been obvious for years. When I heard she was to interview Bush before his visit, my first thought was: "Well there's no point watching that. We'll learn nothing." And I was right. Coleman could have seized her once-in-a-lifetime chance, and asked the President some good (and yes, tough) questions, such as:
  1. "Who's next?"
  2. "Is the war against the suicide-bombing foreign Islamist volunteers in Iraq the climax of the War on Islamism, or just Act One?"
  3. "How would America respond to a nuclear 9/11?"
  4. "Why doesn't America (or Israel) bomb Iran's nuclear weapons program?"
  5. "Why are you an ally of Saudi Arabia?"
  But instead of this, instead of asking something new, Coleman just gave a bunch of tired leftie speeches about the past, delivered in her usual rude, obnoxious style. Why Bush agreed to be interviewed by this person I don't know. Had his people never heard of her? Why didn't the US Embassy in Ireland explain who she was?

• Coleman opens by clearly saying that RTE is only going to represent one view: "Mr. President, you're going to arrive in Ireland in about 24 hours' time, and no doubt you will be welcomed by our political leaders. Unfortunately, the majority of our public do not welcome your visit because they're angry over Iraq, they're angry over Abu Ghraib. Are you bothered by what Irish people think?" I can't stand the fact that she represents all of Ireland as agreeing with her. But I admit that "the majority" appears to be true. 65 percent of Irish opposed the visit. I just wish that RTE spoke for the 35 percent, and not just for the 65 percent.

• Coleman says: "But, Mr. President, the world is a more dangerous place today. I don't know whether you can see that or not." She - a negative, cynical leftie hack - patronises one of the most radical and visionary thinkers and doers on earth. A man who is leading a massive, glorious democratic revolution in the Middle East that will make the world so much a better place. A man who is refusing to accept the world the way it is, but is making it progress towards something better - democracy and freedom for all humanity.

• Coleman says: "But I think there is a feeling that the world has become a more dangerous place because you have taken the focus off al Qaeda and diverted into Iraq." So Coleman now suddenly cares about the war against al Qaeda?? That would be news to anybody who has been watching RTE for the last couple of years.
• This "Iraq distracts from the WoT" argument is hilarious, when made by people who never supported the WoT in the first place. A good rule for life is: Beware of taking advice from neutrals and enemies. Take advice only from friends, who actually want you to win. The White House should listen to the criticisms of people like Michael Ledeen. They should not listen to the criticisms of people like Carole Coleman.

• I wanted to slap him, Carole Coleman's memoirs of the interview, The Sunday Times, October 09, 2005
  • What a glimpse into the parochial, insular leftie world of RTE. "'What would you ask the president of the United States?' I enquired of everyone I met in the following days. Ideas had already been scribbled on scattered notepads in my bedroom, on scraps of paper in my handbag and on my desk, but once the date was confirmed, I mined suggestions from my peers in RTE and from foreign policy analysts. I grilled my friends in Washington and even pestered cab drivers. After turning everything over in my head, I settled on a list of 10 questions." And what does she ask? A load of tired leftie talking points, instead of something like the challenging questions I suggested above. Does she not know any neo-cons? What is wrong with RTE that they couldn't ask a single non left-wing question?
  • Like an adolescent student, she actually thinks "free world" is an ironic term: "'You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,' she began. I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the 'leader of the free world' only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff."
  • I can't stand that my tax money was going to pay for someone like her. The state should simply get out of the media business, full stop. All media should be private.

  • Why I want to slap Carole Coleman by Gwen Halley, 16 Oct 2005.

The BBC

• The BBC on Israel
• The BBC on Iraq

• Orla Guerin
• Fergal Keane
• Rageh Omaar

• bbcwatch.com
  • Report on BBC bias on Iraq and Israel
  • Report on BBC bias on Israel
• biased-bbc.blogspot.com - The problem isn't BBC bias per se - It's the fact that people are forced to pay for it.
• bbc-biased.blogspot.com
• lastnightsbbcnews.blogspot.com - blog on the pro-left, pro-Arab, anti-Israel, anti-America and anti-west bias of the BBC. Again, if the BBC was private, this bias would be fine. It's the fact that people are forced to pay for it.

• Charles Moore on the BBC:
  • Having to pay to support the "soft left" BBC bias - "is like compulsory tithes to the Church of England in the 18th century."
  • More here.

• The appalling John Humphrys of the BBC:
  • Stephen Pollard:
    • I don't want bias with my cornflakes
    • More on John Humphrys: "Humphrys argued that: "If we were not prepared to take on a very, very powerful government indeed there would be no point in the BBC existing - that is ultimately what the BBC is for." No, Mr Humphrys, it is not. The purpose of public service broadcasting is precisely the opposite: to provide an analytical, unbiased and serious alternative to the supposed free-for-all of commercial broadcasting. That it is now ITV and Sky to whom one turns for unbiased coverage is thanks to John Humphrys and his BBC ilk."
  • Melanie Phillips:
    • Why won't Britain listen?
    • The British Quisling Corporation - "If the BBC had behaved in this way during World War Two, we would have lost it."
    • Bias at the Beeb
  • John Bolton v. A sneering John Humphrys, 17 May 2007. God, Humphrys is annoying. Snide, sneering, patronising, condescending, obnoxious. Asking offensive loaded questions based on an unthinking far left view of the world. And yet convinced he is neutral and objective. As a comment says: "Notice how touchy left-wingers are getting about being called left-wingers." Another comment parodies Humphrys' questions: "Just because they ask questions like - "Isn't it time you stinking American neocons left the world which has learned to hate you so much alone?" doesn't mean one can draw nasty conclusions about political bias."
  • By the way, John Humphrys is not a relation of mine. Not in the last 300 years anyway.

• As well as their biased news service, there has been a severe lack of serious documentaries on BBC analysing the War on Islamism. Instead of a serious analysis of Islamism, its goals, its links to hatred preached in mosques and schools, especially in the west, and its links to Palestinian terror, we get Chomskyite nonsense like "The Power of Nightmares".
• "The Power of Nightmares" (BBC, 2004).
  • The Power of Bad Television - review of "The Power of Nightmares", by Clive Davis. "It is a sign of how fevered political debate has become in Britain's media-land that such lurid, Michael Moore-ish notions are given a prime-time slot on the channel that once gave us Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation."

• "The war party", Panorama, BBC, 18 May 2003 (anti-neocon polemic).
• Peter Taylor says we should surrender (also here), 2006. I wasn't aware that Peter Taylor said we should fight in the first place.

• Channel 4 and More4 are similarly biased. Michael Gove suggests More4 be renamed "MichaelMoore4".

"Don't Panic, I'm Islamic" (2005) - The worst BBC program ever?

• Unfortunately, the program had a few flaws:
  1. First, the program was an endless parade of twisted, paranoid and aggressive British Muslims. One of the Muslims supposed to "reassure" us was a member of the pro-jihad RESPECT party! Another was Asghar Bukhari of the extremist MPAC. Another was the appalling Lord Ahmed, who blames the victim of Islamist violence for the violence. Another idiot claimed Bin Laden is not evil, and is very "spiritual". Another said many Muslims admire Bin Laden, and she more or less believes that America carried out 9/11. Another, Shahid Butt, has a terror conviction.
  2. No Muslim on the program ever said anything like: "I love the West because of its Enlightenment values of freedom of religion, free speech and freedom of sexuality." Instead it was an endless series of leftist or Islamist complaints about Britain and western democracies. What planet do the BBC team live on? Couldn't they find a single decent, attractive, liberal Muslim to present to us? Why do they have to confirm all our prejudices with this parade of unattractive characters?
  3. This deeply stupid program laughed at the supposed media "hysteria" about Islamic terror, and ridiculed the idea of an attack on Britain. It read out newspaper reports of plots in funny voices. However, only weeks after the program aired, on 7 July 2005, Islamic terrorists bombed London, killing more people than in any attack since 1945.
  4. Then, two weeks later, on 21 July 2005, there was a second attempted mass murder in London by, bizarrely, Islamic terrorists again.

• Finally (and this is the act of pure leftie genius that makes this perhaps the worst BBC program ever):
  1. They featured a cheerful, unthreatening, Muslim cockney called Mohammed Hamid, and his paintballing pal Muhammad al-Figari.
  2. Later, unfortunately, it turned out that Mohammed Hamid (or "Osama Bin London" as he liked to call himself) knew the 21 July bombers! The bombers Ramzi Mohammed and Osman Hussain went paintballing with him days before the attack! He also knew the bomber Muktar Said Ibraihim.
  3. This all emerged in Dec 2007 when Mohammed Hamid and his pal Muhammad al-Figari went on trial on Islamic terrorism charges! Mohammed Hamid was charged with recruiting and grooming the 21 July bombers. You couldn't make it up.
  4. Mohammed Hamid is found guilty, Feb 2008. "Mohammed Hamid told young Muslims the 52 deaths in the July 7 attacks on London were "not even breakfast to me" as he urged them to prepare for jihad". "Hamid exchanged 155 calls and text messages with the four July 21 bombers." He sent the July 21 bombers "a text on the night of July 21 and attempted to ring both of them the following day." Muhammad al-Figari was also found guilty.
  5. A relative of Mohammed Hamid says: "he hated Britain and told his nephews the whole country should be Islamic and they should kill non-believers."

• Well done, BBC. Your program now suggests that if you pick random British Muslims, they will as often as not turn out to either be terrorists, know terrorists, or support terrorists.
• To actually feature someone who is a terrorist is real genius. Surely, you would think, the first qualification for the program telling us not to "panic" would be no connection with terror at all. If I took the BBC's ludicrous program seriously, I would think all or most British Muslims were terrorists. But luckily I don't, and I do not.

• "Don't panic, it will make it harder to kill you" might have been a better title in retrospect. Here are lots of funny alternate titles for this absurd program, including:
  • Don't be stressed, It's just a vest.
  • Just be calm, we have no bomb.
  • Just relax, accept attacks.
  • Don't emote, let me cut your throat.
  • Hold the consternation, practice female genital mutilation.
  • Why do you fret? I'm boarding your jet.

RTE and the BBC are left-wing?

Consider the following:

1. When I had a soft left view of foreign policy, I considered RTE and the BBC to be objective. Doesn't that indicate something wrong?
2. I suspect you are soft left of centre yourself, if you think RTE and the BBC are objective. Am I right? Be honest.
3. What you need to do is show me right-wingers who think RTE and the BBC are objective. Tell me here.
4. Survey of Americans, Jan 2007 shows Democrats are far more likely to think the media is unbiased than Republicans. Doesn't that more or less prove the media is biased towards the Democrats?
5. Leftist Harry Browne graphs the media, and thinks RTE is left of centre. Doesn't that indicate something wrong?
6. When it comes to things I still agree with the left on, such as sex and atheism, I still feel RTE and the BBC are pretty objective. But I guess that means something really is wrong.
7. Or put it this way. On this page I list newspaper and TV/radio people that I think are left-wing. On this page I list newspaper people that are right-wing, but I am unable to list any TV/radio people. I cannot think of any TV/radio people in Ireland that are clearly right-wing. Newspapers, even the left-wing newspapers, are much more diverse than TV/radio.

8. I don't actually mind that RTE and the BBC are not objective. I'm not objective myself. I look on the world a certain way. I spin the news. Everybody spins the news based on how they look at the world. It's impossible not to. What I object to is: (1) the claim that they are objective, and: (2) that I have to pay for it. Either make them private and voluntary (in which case they can be as subjective as they like), or, if taxpayers have to pay for them, make them objective.
9. Is it possible to be objective at all? I think it's impossible for one person to be objective. But there is a model for how a collective can produce something fairly objective. I find Wikipedia to be broadly objective (neither left nor right). So I'm not impossible to please. It's not the case that unless something is right-wing I will consider it left-wing. I can give you an example of objective (neither left nor right): Wikipedia.
10. How does Wikipedia manage it? The answer is simple. Both left-wing and right-wing people are writing. The right-wing positions are not paraphrased by unsympathetic left-wingers. They are written in the language the right-wingers would use themselves. Then the left respond in the language they would use themselves. The right-wingers also force the inclusion of uncomfortable topics that the left-wingers would avoid (just as the left-wingers force the inclusion of uncomfortable topics the right would avoid).

The lesson for RTE and the Irish Times is that it's not enough to have left-wing journalists trying to summarise what the strange right-wingers believe. You have to hire right-wing journalists as well as left, and let them write it in the way a right-winger would think. Wikipedia has left-wing and right-wing writers, and the end product sounds objective. RTE and the Irish Times have only left-wing writers, and when they try to paraphrase right-wing ideas they invariably distort them.

• We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News, Simon Walters, Mail on Sunday, 21st October 2006. Former BBC political editor Andrew Marr said: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias." A BBC executive said: "Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it."

• Survey of Americans, Aug 2007
  • In 1985, 92 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Republicans had a favourable view of TV network news. Sounds like it was unbiased once. In 2007, 84 percent of Democrats but only 56 percent of Republicans have a favourable view of it. Sounds like it is unbiased no longer.
  • In 1985, 34 percent of Republicans thought the press was too critical of America. In 2007, 63 percent do.
  • As for who is telling the truth about Iraq, I would trust the U.S. military more than the Irish or UK media. Republicans share my scepticism about the media. 76 percent of Republicans broadly think the military is giving an accurate picture of the war. Only 34 percent think the press is. With Democrats it is reversed. Only 36 percent of Democrats think the military is giving an accurate picture of the war. While 56 percent think the press is. Could we have a new definition of the left: The left are the people who believe what they read in the papers and see on TV.

The poverty of Irish media

• Bruce Bawer describes the poverty of media in Europe compared to the diversity of media in the US. He talks about Norway, but he could be talking about Ireland:
  • After discussing the US, he says: "Nothing remotely approaching this breadth of news and opinion is available in a country like Norway. Purportedly to strengthen journalistic diversity (which, in the ludicrous words of a recent prime minister, "is too important to be left up to the marketplace"), Norway's social-democratic government actually subsidizes several of the country's major newspapers (in addition to running two of its three broadcast channels and most of its radio); yet the Norwegian media are (guess what?) almost uniformly social-democratic - a fact reflected not only in their explicit editorial positions but also in the slant and selectivity of their international coverage."
  • "Most Norwegians are so accustomed to being presented with only one position on certain events and issues (such as the Iraq War) that they don't even realize that there exists an intelligent alternative position."

• Eoghan Harris on the utter failure of the Irish Times and RTE:
  • A formidable leader of the conservative revolution, on how the Irish Times and RTE don't even understand what's going on under Bush since 9/11. A vast democratic revolution is underway in the Middle East, led by radical thinkers in the US who are sick of "realpolitik" and want to spread freedom instead, and the Irish Times and RTE are so blinded by their prejudices that they are missing the whole story.
  • Why Palestinians are the pet project of the Irish left, 9 Dec 2001. - "As the Americans conclude their triumphant campaign against the Taliban, you have to admire the resilience of that radical young toff, Sir Montrose D'Olier. [RTE and the Irish Times] As a result of dud tips received from his resident guru Robert Fisk, he has been wrong about three wars in the past 10 years: the Gulf War, the Kosovo War and the war against the Taliban. And if you took your politics from RTE and the Irish Times you would have been wrong too."

  • Comments of mass distraction buried in bodybags of bluster, on the Iraq War:
    • "Both the Irish Times and RTE have been consistently hostile to this war, even when it became clear that most Iraqis want to see Saddam gone ... RTE in particular has been so partisan as to be propagandist."
    • "This is the 5th war which RTE has read wrong, and for the same set of reasons - a combination of anti-American prejudice, a total ignorance of America's advances in high-tech warfare, and an invincible inability to understand .. George Bush and the so-called Pentagon hawks"
    • "RTE's poor professional reporting .. arises from its bad politics. Montrose has an anti-American canteen culture that cuts it off from a constantly-changing world. Over the past 10 years, RTE has been biased against American-led interventions in five wars: the first Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and now the Second Gulf War. .. But if RTE was wrong in the past, it is much more likely to be wrong in the future."

• CBC Television News Guilty of Anti-American Bias, Says New Study - A study of Canada's state-run CBC TV finds, over the year 2002:
  • Of the full 2,400 statements referring to the United States, 49 percent were neutral, 34 percent were negative about the US, and 15 percent were positive.
  • Of statements about terrorism, 58 percent were neutral, 38 percent were negative about the US, and 3 percent were positive. That is, of statements that took a line, 92 percent were negative about the US.
  • Of statements about Afghanistan, 48 percent were neutral, 44 percent were negative about the US, and 7 percent were positive. That is, of statements that took a line, 86 percent were negative about the US.
  • Of statements about Iraq, 59 percent were neutral, 33 percent were negative about the US, and 7 percent were positive. That is, of statements that took a line, 82 percent were negative about the US.
  • Of statements about the US and Israel, 43 percent were neutral, 35 percent were negative about the US, and 13 percent were positive.
  • Of statements about US foreign policy in general, 25 percent were neutral, 61 percent were negative about the US, and 14 percent were positive.

• I would love to see such a study done of British state-run BBC TV or Irish state-run RTE TV. I'm sure the numbers would be just the same.

Left-wing Irish blogs

• Indymedia
• IAWM

• The Cedar Lounge Revolution
• In Fact, Ah
• The Midnight Court (formerly here)
• Best of Both Worlds
• Potatriotique
• Fustar
• toirtap
• progressiveireland
• Dublin Opinion
• Myers Watch
• Graham Ó Maonaigh

• Free Stater
  • I've no idea who this guy is, but I thought this was very funny: "The United Nations represents the noblest ideal which has yet arisen since modern nations came into being."
  • So the idea that dictators should have a vote on what happens in the world, and we in the democracies should "obey" them, is "the noblest ideal which has yet arisen since modern nations came into being"!
  • I do enjoy it when relentlessly negative cynics like this guy finally take a break from telling you what they are against (America, Britain, Israel, neo-cons, etc.) and make the error of telling you what they are for.

• Back Seat Drivers provides intelligent leftie commentary (apart from Jon Ihle and Jason Ihle, who provide intelligent non-leftie commentary).

Dormant or extinct:

• Threats to Democracy
• FI Fie Foe Fum

• Fiona de Londras (or here, formerly here and here) writes intelligent leftie commentary.
  • Discussion with Fiona de Londras

• Right-wing Irish blogs

"The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power."
- George Orwell, "England Your England", 1941, The Lion and the Unicorn (also here).
The negative, defeatist, hypercritical whining I hear on my radio, my TV, and in my newspaper is perfectly described by Orwell.
I really understand why politicians pay so little attention to negative whining critics like the above.

"Throughout history, civilizations rise and fall. They fall for the same reason ... the lack of will to defend her, a cancer which starts not from the bottom but invariably from the top. ... It has always been this way. If you feel you see it happening now, before your very eyes, well .. you are not alone. A society unwilling to enforce the laws that civilize it, that is unable or unwilling to see the advantages of civilization, a society led by the pampered, the narcissistic and the corrupt, is not long for this Earth. Our enemies look at us and see precisely these symptoms, and the symptons are worsening. ... One thing they do not see, however - also there. They do not see the Remnant. They do not see the power and resilience of what the irreplaceable Victor Davis Hanson has referred to as "the Old Breed." Nock and Isaiah believed that the purpose of the Remnant was to rebuild a new civilization from the ashes of those destroyed by their own masters. And certainly to date this has always been their main function. But there is something different -- just perhaps, something fundamentally different this time around. Because today, for the first time in human history, common people can communicate directly with one another. We are no longer dependent on spineless politicians and the jaded masters of the press to color our opinions of the world. For the first time in human history, the Remnant can reach out to each other on these gossamer threads of a world-wide web. I believe - utterly - that this ability for the common person to communicate with other common people, this internet, will allow us to end-run the cycle of civilization. I believe it in my bones. My friends, Western Civilization is not on its last legs. Western Civilization is going to the stars. Count on it."
- Bill Whittle, May 21, 2007.
The fantastic thing about the modern world is that we are no longer dependent on the media. And this may ultimately mean that Iraq will be won where Vietnam was lost.
For example, when, in any previous war, could one read, whenever one liked, positive, morale-boosting, optimistic propaganda by those who wished the troops well? (I do not use "propaganda" here as a negative word, but rather to describe writing that is open and honest about being subjective and partisan.) One could never read such happy propaganda easily in Vietnam, the Cold War, or even WW2 or any previous war, except dull state propaganda written by the civil service. But now one can everywhere read optimistic, pro-troops propaganda written by private individuals for free as a labour of love. This is something new, that the Internet has enabled, and that old media had suppressed.