It is over one month since we issued our MediaShot 'Gas, Gaeilge and the Media'. RTE remain mute on the subject.

Below is an excellent letter received from a reader in response to the Shot. 

Dear RTE,
 
Could you draw the attention of the editors of the Prime Time programme to the following complaint?

As a regular Prime Time watcher I enjoy your programme as one of the few reliable, searching and balanced sources of main stream news analysis in the country. Sad then to see you give up on the Shell to Sea campaigners so easily. In the excellent article 'Gas, Gaeilge and the Media' on www.mediabite.org it is clear that your coverage has fallen short of 'independence' on this issue, and has focused on a narrow analysis of events which portrays protesters negatively, while ignoring the broader and most glaring issues in this sage: ie, that the government has:

- unlike any other country, given away (for what private profit?) a natural resource worth billions which rightly belongs to the Irish People

- encouraged/allowed the guardai to use violence to intimidate legitimate and peaceful protesters

- encouraged national press coverage more favourable to Shell than to the people of the country

- given its support and substantial resources to protect Shell, a foreign company, rather than to its own people.

By any standards, these are worrying issues for a democracy, and I would have expected Prime Time to continue to give prominence to them. Instead I was horrified that the bias given by Pat Kenny and Joe Duffy on radio was continued in a less hysterical but equally negative way in your coverage.

As the media bite article says, why have you asked Mark Garavan "Is it just selfishness on the part of a few people?" [RTE presenter Miriam O'Callahan to the Shell to Sea spokesperson, on Primetime 5/10/06]

And in a Primetime debate in August last year, Keelin Shanley stated that "you [Shell to Sea] and the other local people opposed to this pipeline are really holding the country to ransom." [RTE Primetime 4/08/06]

To give balance in this issue, why have you not highlighted the broader issues (above), and as Mediabite put it, not asked a Shell representative, 'are you effectively holding the country to ransom?'"

I would be very glad if future programmes would focus, in the interests of fairness, on these other perspectives.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Collins

Dear Tony,

Your e-mail in relation to coverage of the 'Shell to Sea' campaign on RTÉ Prime Time is being forwarded for information and interest to the programme.
 
With best regards
Nina Ward
RTÉ Information Officer