OscailtAlliance Party MP and RTE's John Bowman expose Eoghan Harris distortion of Belfast flag vote and his role in Mary McAleese electionTwo strikes against Eoghan Harris in this week’s Sunday Independent
Breaking news: Italian MP, Sgarbi denounces the Statistical Fraud on COVID-19. The speech of the Member of Parliament Vittorio Sgarbi in the session of the Italian Camera, Meeting no. 331 of Friday 24, April, 2020. Vittorio Sgarbi, denounces the closure of 60% of the businesses for 25,000 COVID-19 Deaths, of which the National Institute of Health says 96.3% died NOT of COVID-19 but of other pathologies. That means only 925 have died of the virus. 24,075 have died of other things.2013-01-20T23:07:35+00:00Indymedia Irelandimc-ireland@lists.indymedia.iehttp://www.indymedia.ie/atomfullposts?story_id=103176http://www.indymedia.ie/graphics/feedlogo.gifHow the Sindo likes to bury stuff... normallyhttp://www.indymedia.ie/article/103176#comment2941902013-01-20T23:07:35+00:00Tom CooperNo Mention of Harris embarrassment on page oneNo Mention of Harris embarrassment on page oneLetters to Broadcasting Authority of Ireland on refusal to consider complaint against Eoghan Harris programmehttp://www.indymedia.ie/article/103176#comment2941952013-01-21T08:47:36+00:00Tom CooperDear Professor Chris Morash - Chairperson, Compliance Committee, Broadcasting Au...Dear Professor Chris Morash - Chairperson, Compliance Committee, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI),<br />
<br />
I refer to the BAI’s letter of 5 October 2012 to me from Jean Crampton,<br />
enclosing the BAI Compliance Committee’s determination, under your signature<br />
as Chairperson, on my complaint, BAI number 70/12.<br />
<br />
The refusal of the BAI Compliance Committee to consider my complaint about<br />
the RTÉ programme An Tost Fada (RTÉ One, 16 April 2012) under Section 48<br />
(1) (a) of the Broadcasting Act 2009 is, by any reasonable standard, perverse.<br />
<br />
RTÉ agrees with me that this is the applicable section under which the<br />
complaint should have been investigated. It is the standard under which such<br />
complaints have been adjudicated on in the past.<br />
<br />
My complaint noted RTÉ’s acceptance of errors in two key programme areas.<br />
RTÉ agreed that the programme confused the IRA execution of two farmers for<br />
informing, named Connell and Sweetman, in February 1921 during the War of<br />
Independence, by broadcasting instead that they were killed for sectarian<br />
reasons in April 1922. I pointed out that that the death of the two men was well<br />
documented (indeed including by Eoghan Harris in his review of Jasper Wolfe of<br />
Skibbereen in the Sunday Independent) and that the date of death was known<br />
to the programme makers who obscured it in the broadcast.<br />
<br />
RTÉ also broadcast that, as a result of sectarian persecution immediately after<br />
the killing of the two farmers, the Church of Ireland Salter family (the subjects of<br />
the programme) fled West Cork in April 1922. It was further broadcast that the<br />
British government simultaneously gave them £1,700 emergency compensation.<br />
RTÉ concede that this compensation figure broadcast was also wrong.<br />
<br />
I demonstrated that the ancillary claims broadcast alongside that<br />
assertion were wrong too. No emergency compensation was paid in 1922. Mr.<br />
Salters did not leave in a hurry in April 1922. He sold his farm for £1,900 to a<br />
local Auctioneer in June 1922 under instruction. Salters claimed in his (not<br />
broadcast) comprehensive 1927 claim to the British government that this was<br />
under IRA instruction due to his loyal and active support for the British Crown<br />
during the War of Independence. In 1928 the British government offered<br />
compensation to Mr. Salters as a loyalist for events that happened prior to April<br />
1922. These claims were again easily checkable but RTÉ ignored those errors<br />
also. That formed part of my compliant to the BCI. I was not concerned solely<br />
with the actual amount of compensation (a false nitpicking impression<br />
promoted by RTÉ and unfortunately amplified by you).<br />
<br />
.... <br />
<br />
<strong>The attached PDF contains the rest of the letter and a previous one to the BAI, taking issue with a BAI proposal to refuse to consider my complaint under fairness, impartiality and objectivity provisions in the Broadcasting Act. This BAI decision let the Eoghan Harris programme off the hook.</strong><br />
<br />
See also:<br />
<br />
RTE upholds complaint against Eoghan Harris programme on War of independence<br />
<a href="http://www.indymedia.ie/article/102026" title="http://www.indymedia.ie/article/102026">http://www.indymedia.ie/article/102026</a><br />
<br />
Sectarian narrative about the Irish War of Independence<br />
<a href="http://irishvolunteers.org/2012/04/sectarian-narrative-about-the-irish-war-of-independence/" title="http://irishvolunteers.org/2012/04/sectarian-narrative-about-the-irish-war-of-independence/">http://irishvolunteers.org/2012/04/sectarian-narrative-...ence/</a>Guess who - Irish Times won't tell us who repeated Naomi Long gaffehttp://www.indymedia.ie/article/103176#comment2942432013-01-26T11:39:39+00:00Jimmy ClarksonGuess who repeated the 'piece of cloth' gaffe in the Irish Times - see apology t...Guess who repeated the 'piece of cloth' gaffe in the Irish Times - see apology today 26 January 2013:<br />
<a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0126/1224329304206.html" title="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0126/1224329304206.html">http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0126/1....html</a><br />
<br />
You can't tell from the apology since the Irish Times left the author's name out. It was none other than Eoghan Harris co-thinker and former associate of loyalist paramilitary organisations, David Adams:<br />
<br />
<small><strong>Bringing loyalists in from the cold DAVID ADAMS Irish Times 17 January 2013<br />
<br />
"Did Northern Ireland’s politicians sleepwalk their way to this point in the peace process? Sometimes you have to wonder. For instance, the MP for East Belfast, Naomi Long, reacted to unionist anger at the removal of the union flag from Belfast City Hall by questioning how anyone could get excited over “a piece of cloth”.<br />
<br />
One would expect the deputy leader of the Alliance Party, of all people, to have some idea of the enormous potency of symbols. You don’t have to be from Northern Ireland, or live in a post-conflict society at all, to appreciate this. Remember the significance afforded to a certain piece of music being played at Croke Park in 2007?"</small></strong><br />
<br />
Why not tell us in your apology who wrote the offending words, Irish Times paper of record? <br />
<small><em>(Another question for the Irish Times, if David Adams can have a regular column, why not Gerry?)</em></small><br />
<br />
Tom Cooper's correspondence with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland shows that some people and opinions are institutionally protected, even when they have demonstrably been found out. Harris would have gone to town in and with his paper if the bias and big mistakes in his flawed TV documentary were discovered in a programme with an opposite point of view. <br />
<br />
The message to RTE broadcasters is, broadcast flawed and biased programmes with views that accord with those who run powerful newspapers. Do that and you will survive, kowtow to the rich and powerful. Be or become a cynic.