Tuesdays 9 o clock news / Prime Time

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday February 05, 2003 00:02 by Ocean thefridgedoor at hotmail dot com

Disturbing coverage of the build up to war

There seems to be something a bit odd happening on RTE in the last few days. I'm sure that most people can agree that our state/commercial news sources are far from unbiased but I think that there has been a new tendency towards a more overt slant recently.

There were openly biased value judgements (which have no place on "public service" news reports) on the 9 o clock news today. A correspondent reporting on the current political stance of France to the British/US war drive referred to Jacques Chirac as a "wily old fox". Then going on to compare Chirac to Sadam Husein who they reffered to as "another wily old fox". The message seems to be one all too familiar to those keeping watch on the developments of the "war on terrorism": if you're not fighting with us you're a terrorist fighting against.

Todays Prime Time had a feature on the antiwar protests at shannon. The pro business/pro war side of the "debate" kickede off with character assasination and continued with the shouting down of the opposition. (That fuckhead presenter) Bowman shamefully allowed the pro business/pro war/pro private property speaker to completely dominate the sham of a debate until the peace movement speaker was on the defensive and too flustered to effectively present any real arguments.

personally i also feel that the antiwar movement people quoted were pussy footing around the issues and avoided saying things which should have been said(probably out of a self censoring duty to market their ideas in as innofensive a manner as possible). i think it ought to have been said that:

1. revenue gained from the transport of american war materials through shannon is blood money that humanitarian reasons would suggest we were better off without. if that means jobs are lost well then that's just too fucking bad, at least the families of the newly unemployed aren't likely to be carpet bombed like the iraqis.

2. if the the american war build up is so good for business then that means that a lot of soul searching should be done about the nature of business that this implies.

3. the ploughshare actions have been the work of individuals who have chosen to interfere with the drive towards war in a way that we support but personally chose not to emulate without disrespecting their obvious dedication and determination.

4. the news that "american airways" are scaling down their use of shannon airport as a stop over suggests that the ploughshares action, and the larger antiwar movement, has been a success and hence been legitamised.

Ocean