Bruce Arnold sums up what our taxes pay for:
"The station is riddled with agenda-thinking and planning. Give RTE a story or a responsibility and it will immediately write the agenda for it, traducing the responsibility and suiting the story to the muddled objectives RTE thinks journalism is about."
"Generic BBC America Correspondent"
is a hilarious 2010 satire
slagging off the
BBC
for its sanctimonious bias against the Republicans in the US.
But it also works as satire of RTE or the Irish Times.
They are just like this too.
RTE sells the centre-left line on Israel and the jihad, whether the taxpayer agrees with that line or not.
"The Ashes of 9/11", RTE TV, 11 Sept 2011, exhibits the classic bias that makes RTE so annoying on these issues.
A respectful tribute to the 9/11 victims is suddenly and distastefully interrupted (at 41:20)
with an unidentified narrative voice claiming that the cause of 9/11 was
US support for Israel.
Outrageous RTE obituary of Sharon by Carole Coleman, 11 Jan 2014, repeats the slander:
"When hundreds of Palestinians were massacred in refugee camps by Christian milita, Sharon was held personally responsible, earning him the reputation of a war criminal."
This is RTE's official obituary!
Shameful.
RTE news report by Karen Creed, 12 Jan 2014, casually claims that Ariel Sharon actually led the
Sabra and Shatila massacre!
"This Palestinian woman survived the massacre that was led by Sharon
in Beirut in 1982 but her family were killed."
After complaints, two weeks later,
RTE News, 26 Jan 2014 (at 22:48) corrected this outrageous report.
Outrageous RTE headline of 30 Nov 2015.
One Palestinian stabs an Israeli policeman in the neck.
Another Palestinian, a
convicted Jew-stabbing terrorist,
throws firebombs at Israeli police.
And what is RTE's headline?
"Two Palestinians killed during clashes".
Absolute disgrace.
Michael Heney,
journalist on
Prime Time, RTE TV, June 2003,
claims that
Israel
is the main cause of the Islamic jihad
raging across the world.
And I am forced by my tax to pay for this left-wing Chomskyite analysis.
The sane person being interviewed by the crazy person is
Danielle Pletka
of the American Enterprise Institute.
Richard Downes was in 2001-08 typical of the liberal-left's opposition
to the neo-conservative dreams of bringing democracy to the Arab world.
He writes a
book on Iraq in 2006,
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.
As if to demonstrate the bias of RTE, the
RTE review
of the book says:
"Downes is remarkably gentle and understanding in his portraits of the occupying forces".
The reviewer simply assumes that normal Irish people would be hostile to the occupying forces!
Interview of Richard Downes, Nov 2006
(see copy
and try
archive).
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 jihadists and Islamists and Baathists and Iran and Syria
- are responsible for all the death and destruction since liberation.
Why not blame the Iraqi resistance?
Are they not moral agents?
Are they mere animals?
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 (17%) nutjobs like this,
so long as they interview the sane (81%) 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?
The very first page of
Richard Crowley's book
No Man's Land: Dispatches from the Middle East (2007)
loses me.
He lost me once he said "impartiality".
The world should not be impartial
between an open liberal democracy and thuggish tribal totalitarians.
It should support the liberal democracy.
In the conclusion of his book, Richard Crowley declares:
It is wrong to alienate Hamas.
Hamas might be interested in peace.
Israelis, not Palestinians, want to keep the war going.
The solution to the war is the ethnic cleansing of the prosperous Jews of the West Bank.
Carole Coleman's sneering
RTE interview of President Bush
before his visit to Ireland, June 2004,
perfectly encapsulates RTE's institutional
anti-Americanism.
See copies:
and
transcript.
Carole Coleman
was Washington correspondent for RTE
in the years after 9/11.
Her distaste and contempt for Bush had been obvious for
years.
When I heard she was to interview Bush before his 2004 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:
"Who's next?"
"Is the war against the suicide-bombing
foreign Islamist volunteers in Iraq the
climax of the War on Islamism,
or just Act One?"
"How would America respond to a nuclear 9/11?"
"Why doesn't America
(or Israel) bomb Iran's nuclear weapons program?"
"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,
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 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.
CBS
in Sept 2004
used
fake documents
to try to swing the
U.S. Presidential Election
of Nov 2004
for their man John Kerry. It failed.
They were exposed immediately.
Bush won, Kerry lost,
and Dan Rather's career ended in disgrace.
RTE
in Oct 2011
used
the dirty tricks
of an IRA godfather
and a
fake tweet
from an IRA supporter
to try to swing the
Irish Presidential election
of Oct 2011
for their man
Michael D. Higgins.
It worked.
They were not exposed properly until after the election.
Sean Gallagher lost
and
Michael D. won.
The left is very strong in Ireland.
(Video is from an IRA account. Ignore the editorialising.)
Years later, in 2017, Sean Gallagher wins
substantial damages
from RTE
for their dirty tricks in 2011.
But Michael D. is still President.
RTE swung the election.
Funny how RTE's mistake did not swing the election for the right-winger, isn't it?
What a coincidence that it swung it for the left-winger!
Imagine for a second the alternative
- that Michael D. was ahead in the polls until the last debate,
that RTE then used a fake tweet and dirty tricks to make Michael D. look bad,
and at the last moment swung the election for Sean Gallagher.
And then it came out later that the facts were wrong, but it was too late for Michael D.
Imagine that. You can't. It would never happen.