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Irish. Atheist. Liberal-right. Anti-jihad. Pro-American. Pro-Israel.

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Politics - The Irish left - Media
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The BBC

The Guardian

The Irish left (media)

The Irish media's lowest moment: The Irish presidential election, 2011.
The Irish media failed to vet the winning candidate Michael D. Higgins.

Introduction

Much of the Irish media is left-wing in the specific sense that I use - that they oppose the victory of western front-line states (like America, Britain and Israel) against non-western enemies.

For some of the Irish media below, it's open anti-Americanism. They hate America and want it to fail. They are hostile to democracies like Israel, and romanticise third world fascist revolutionaries like the Palestinians. They hate capitalism and long for socialism. They hate the fact that Ireland, of all places, is one of the greatest capitalism success stories in the history of the world.

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.



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.

"Liberal" used here in the American sense of meaning "left-wing".
From 9-11justice.org, now moved to Sacred Cow Burgers. See fair use policy.

The Irish Times (separate page)

RTE (separate page)

Newspapers

Other

Radio and TV

State radio and TV (RTE)

Anti-American, Anti-Israeli - And I am forced to pay for it by law.

Private radio and TV

From here.
Obviously you have to be sceptical of the world the Internet has opened up for us - a world of blogs, foreign media, foreign organisations, direct access to press statements, original documents and other raw material. Otherwise you will start believing 9/11 truthers and Iranian TV.
But the educated Irish reader should not simply accept what RTE and the Irish Times tell him. He should augment it with background reading online.
One of the great wonders of the Internet age is the emergence of sites attacking the media for bias and omission. The media can be incredibly annoying, even more annoying than politicians. And if you want relief for your anger and annoyance at the media, you really have to go online.

RTE and the BBC are left-wing?

Some people think it is a sign of right-wing madness to think RTE and the BBC are left of centre. Surely it is obvious, they say, that RTE and the BBC are objective. Right-wingers are bound to find it "left-wing", and left-wingers are bound to find it "right-wing". That's just a sign of its success, they would say.

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.

The poverty of Irish media

Media Bite

The "Media Bite" site is interesting because it shows the view of the Irish media from the intelligent but extreme left.

Now there's gratitude for you!
450,000 Britons died to protect Ireland from Nazi Germany.
And Irish leftie David Manning of Media Bite just sneers at them, 9 Nov 2011.

Left-wing Irish blogs

I must admit I don't read left-wing Irish blogs much. Why bother when you get the same analysis on RTE and in the Irish Times? Whereas the right-wing Irish blogs offer something different to the mainstream discourse.

I've stripped down this list a bit, since I realised that for many of these sites, years would go by without me ever looking at them.

Dormant or extinct:
See also:
 
   
The hypocrisy of the Irish left:
(Left) Bock the Robber, 9 Jan 2011, is horrified by a humdrum map showing political target seats. He describes it as a call to murder! He uses it to blame Sarah Palin for the Tucson shooting! He compares Palin, a boring parliamentary democrat, to Islamic clerics who constantly call for the death of blasphemers: "So what's the difference between Sarah Palin and a crazy fundamentalist Islamic cleric?"
(Right) Bock the Robber, 3 Jan 2012, praises a song wishing to see Margaret Thatcher dead in the grave: "I understand his anger and contempt."
OK, target metaphors in elections are evil. Singing about jumping on someone's grave is good. Got it.

 
"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.
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