IRELAND
Irish Independent
Sunday May 06 2012
The betrayal of trust that has led to the national broadcaster and self-styled watchdog of the citizen being found guilty by the BAI of the same ‘groupthink’ that characterised the rest of our discredited institutions is bad enough.
What should be of even greater concern, however, is that the station is behaving in the same manner as some FF minister caught with his hand in the ‘greasy till’. All of last week’s Fianna Fail-speak about “grave errors”, “lessons learnt”, “regrettable period in our history”, and most importantly of all, from the viewpoint of RTE, the need to move on, does not disguise the fact that despite its current sheep’s clothing of sorrow, RTE still runs with the ideological wolves.
RTE, however, should not be allowed to move on quite as quickly as it wants to. The libelling of Fr Reynolds did not, to borrow one of the favoured phrases of the Minister for Communications, grow like Topsy. It was instead merely the worse efflorescence of a systemic culture of arrogance, which reached its apotheosis in the even more disturbing Sean Gallagher/Frontline affair. RTE’s Mission to Prey is just one sordid example of how that station has used its protected state to drive a liberal-centred Kulturkampf into the living rooms of a trusting citizenry. The station may publicly cherish its impartiality but the reality is best summarised by the Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet about “How do I love thee, let me count the ways”.
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