Agree? It’s only unhinged and bitter people who think it’s some sort of mouthpiece
For a state broadcaster, they are reasonably unbiased. Not perfect, but we’re nowhere near the Murdoch media levels of propaganda you see in other countries.
Stick up CNN and Fox news side by side and report back with your thoughts…. RTE not perfect but not terrible
How to know a news source is unbiased is when supporters of all political parties feel they are more tough of their party. RTÉ are as unbiased as they can be.
[deleted]
There are many things that people want or believe in this country that make very little sense. When any news outlet reports something contrary to these things, a vocal crowd call them biased. Language used by the far right nutters in the USA has made its way here, like ‘fake news’, ‘sheeple’, or ‘main stream media’ used with derision. And we’ve a growing cohort who believe nothing.
RTE, BBC, Irish Times, Examiner, Guardian are all decent unbiased sources
When determining the bias of a news organization you must also take into account the biases of the people determining the bias.
I take it you have never lived in Australia or the US?
Least biased doesn’t mean never biased. Because that’s impossible.
RTE relative to state media and private media all over the world is extremely reliable.
It’s talking about editorialisation of news and propaganda.
Not whether you think SF get enough invitations to the late late show
It’s not about how you cover something more about what they don’t cover.
I got into a debate about this with an anti-vaxxer on Twitter. I was arguing that RTÉ was quite reliable and unbiased, which he didn’t accept at all. He was sharing videos from GB News but wouldn’t accept any criticism of that station or acknowledge any problems or bias on it. There is a very low bar for news standards in the UK which makes RTÉ look good in comparison I think.
If it is purely about news then they are pretty good. If you include everything like the Late Late, Claire Byrne, etc. then it’s not. I listen to the RTE news headlines on the radio every day because I feel I get a good round up of the news with very little bias. If there’s a story I’m more interested in then I look up a few different sources.
RTÉ News is fantastic. Their European/Brexit coverage, led by Tony Connelly, is literally second-to-none and RTÉ are very often the first in the world to report on major news in Brussels, Dublin and Westminster. The flagship six:one is also very decent considering we don’t have a real 24 hour news channel here.
The only people who moan about RTÉ News are professional whingers who are convinced public broadcasting is some psy-op.
Other decent Irish news: The Irish Times
Other decent (free) international news: Euronews, The Guardian, Vice, France 24, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera.
It’s pretty obvious that RTE is an Awful lot better than many other news orgs. Coming from the North and watching BBC alongside RTE the difference is night and day. And BBC is good by comparison to many others too!
But I hate this nonsense around “bias”. I truly do. Every news org is biased, otherwise they couldn’t report on anything at all. Some of these biases are easily pointed out (fox/the daily mail), or more subtle (RTE), sometimes they’re structural (it is far easier for journalists to hear the police’s side of a story about a protest), economic (appeal to advertisers) or ideological (the Morning Star, an Phoblacht, Breitbart etc). Almost all have a mix of all.
Its impossible to be unbiased. Even if you just stick to the facts, which facts you choose and how you emphasise them will show bias. Sticking exclusively to the facts is also Itself a bias! Not to mention where you get these facts from and whose facts you trust!!
I *Want* my news to be biased! I’d much rather my news source have a consistent philosophical and ideological position and show their own logical arguments for their beliefs than try to con me into believing that what they say accurately reflects the world! At least then, I can reverse their logic to arrive at a position I think makes more sense.
As a socialist, for years when I read the news my go to was the Economist. It’s as biased as you can get (though because it’s biased towards the center right and mostly factual these online measures say its only “slightly biased” lol), but I Knew its outlook and it had no shame of that so I still found it useful.
Note – I’m assuming biased here doesn’t mean bad faith or dishonest. I believe you can argue firmly for something in a biased but honest and fair way.
When there are humans involved it’s never going to be possible to be entirely unbiased. However I think RTE do a reasonable job, I can’t really think of any Laura Kuenssberg style overtly partisan commentators, they try to give airtime to opposing sides, they try to stick to facts generally.
Most of these accusations of bias are extremely infantile anyway, they put the party some hypothetical person supports under scrutiny, said hypothetical person isn’t very intelligent and screams bias.
RTE doesn’t report false stories. My issue with it is what they place emphasis on. Half the evening news is taken up with murders, car crashes, ongoing trials for criminals. They seem to have fully embraced the tabloid mantra of ” if it bleeds it leads”. This is irresponsible, it’s unworthy of a national broadcaster, and it creates a misleading narrative. Let local news cover these stories and let national news focus on “the big picture” stuff.
To be fair RTE are fairly unbiased. Yes some shows are softer than others and don’t ask the hard questions.
Growing up a long way from the border, I was influenced a lot by RTE analysis and reporting of the troubles in the north. In the 1980s as a young adult when study, work and sport brought me frequently to Antrim, Down and Derry, I got a very different perspective of life for Catholics in the north, and why the IRA became active there in the late 1960s. Since then I paid a lot more attention to the national broadcaster and how it presented news from the six counties. For those forty years, my observation is that the station has been biased against republicanism to the point that I could not relate to Catholics from the north until I had the luck to meet enough of them who had the patience to raise my awareness of what life was like for them. It was galling for them to see RTE giving badly informed and biased coverage of the conflict there. Meanwhile they heard and saw the high quality RTE analysis and reporting of anti-government guerilla movements in Spain, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Germany, Colombia, Ethiopia and elsewhere, and understood why I trusted RTE as a source. Even today, RTE’s treatment of Sinn Fein is nothing like how they deal with the mainstream parties in the south. Even the other parties of the left generally get fair and respectful treatment. I am a member of one of those parties (Social Democrats) and am not, nor have I ever been linked in any way with Sinn Fein or any other republican party or even individuals, so my views are not influenced in any way by allegiances to anything but the truth. On every other ground I have high regard for RTE, but on this they must stand back and look honestly at themselves.
Yank here; discovered RTÉ as a news source a few years ago now, when I started searching for low/no-bias reporting on the world from outside-American sources, since there weren’t many here. No regrets at all. The echo chambers in the US feel pretty overwhelming at times; it’s nice to get the view from outside this insanity.
As much as I like to shit on RTE, the news is relatively unbiased in fairness.
For a state broadcaster they are pretty unbiased. Even here in Sweden the state news is way more biased.
Could you provide the actual reporter for some context?
On a global scale? The bar is set is set pretty low by a lot of countries state media so yeah, I’d agree with this.
They’re very good in that regard. Look at how they present the news – a carefully moderated tone where none of their biases or personal opinions colour any of it. Compare that to the joke that is Fox “News” in the US and you’ll be glad we don’t have talking assholes spewing toxic shite about whatever they think we should all be outraged by this time.
I live in the UK. I was home last week and I have to say all Radio and tv news I watched or listened to was excellent compared to UK news media
Look at Fox News and read your question. Then back at Fox News and again at your question. Do RTE have minimal bias? Yes. Yes RTE have minimal bias.
so who is giving this rating and are they unbiased?
I would agree that they are for the most part unbiased in their reporting, but on the flipside it’s evident that they pick and choose what to report.
RTE are a bit soft touch for local stuff, but for international news especially, RTE tend to be fairly on the ball.
They don’t bite the hand that feeds them — but they will nibble at it.
Factual reporting and bias aren’t mutually exclusive… I’d say what they do report is factual, but definitely chose to ignore somethings or lead debates in a direction
I wonder how hard it is to get featured on RTE. Separate from political bias one thing that pisses me off is their useless articles that are ripped straight from BuzzFeed circa 2014, i.e “Autumn Myths” etc. Or every month they seem to have an article about Maura Higgins that serves no purpose other than to keep her desperately relevant. Wouldn’t bother me if it weren’t for the fact it’s funded by the TV license.
The problem of their bias doesn’t come from the things they do broadcast, it also comes from the things they omit from their broadcasts.
Ireland has dull media. RTE isn’t going to solve any major world issues anytime soon either.
But if you think we have lying, biased media in this country you should see most other countries.
And if you compare it to the stuff on news talk and virgin media you’ll see what real bias looks like.
RTE news is amazing compared to the Polish state broadcaster which I get to see a lot of
35 comments
Agree? It’s only unhinged and bitter people who think it’s some sort of mouthpiece
For a state broadcaster, they are reasonably unbiased. Not perfect, but we’re nowhere near the Murdoch media levels of propaganda you see in other countries.
Stick up CNN and Fox news side by side and report back with your thoughts…. RTE not perfect but not terrible
How to know a news source is unbiased is when supporters of all political parties feel they are more tough of their party. RTÉ are as unbiased as they can be.
[deleted]
There are many things that people want or believe in this country that make very little sense. When any news outlet reports something contrary to these things, a vocal crowd call them biased. Language used by the far right nutters in the USA has made its way here, like ‘fake news’, ‘sheeple’, or ‘main stream media’ used with derision. And we’ve a growing cohort who believe nothing.
RTE, BBC, Irish Times, Examiner, Guardian are all decent unbiased sources
When determining the bias of a news organization you must also take into account the biases of the people determining the bias.
I take it you have never lived in Australia or the US?
Least biased doesn’t mean never biased. Because that’s impossible.
RTE relative to state media and private media all over the world is extremely reliable.
It’s talking about editorialisation of news and propaganda.
Not whether you think SF get enough invitations to the late late show
It’s not about how you cover something more about what they don’t cover.
I got into a debate about this with an anti-vaxxer on Twitter. I was arguing that RTÉ was quite reliable and unbiased, which he didn’t accept at all. He was sharing videos from GB News but wouldn’t accept any criticism of that station or acknowledge any problems or bias on it. There is a very low bar for news standards in the UK which makes RTÉ look good in comparison I think.
If it is purely about news then they are pretty good. If you include everything like the Late Late, Claire Byrne, etc. then it’s not. I listen to the RTE news headlines on the radio every day because I feel I get a good round up of the news with very little bias. If there’s a story I’m more interested in then I look up a few different sources.
RTÉ News is fantastic. Their European/Brexit coverage, led by Tony Connelly, is literally second-to-none and RTÉ are very often the first in the world to report on major news in Brussels, Dublin and Westminster. The flagship six:one is also very decent considering we don’t have a real 24 hour news channel here.
The only people who moan about RTÉ News are professional whingers who are convinced public broadcasting is some psy-op.
Other decent Irish news: The Irish Times
Other decent (free) international news: Euronews, The Guardian, Vice, France 24, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera.
It’s pretty obvious that RTE is an Awful lot better than many other news orgs. Coming from the North and watching BBC alongside RTE the difference is night and day. And BBC is good by comparison to many others too!
But I hate this nonsense around “bias”. I truly do. Every news org is biased, otherwise they couldn’t report on anything at all. Some of these biases are easily pointed out (fox/the daily mail), or more subtle (RTE), sometimes they’re structural (it is far easier for journalists to hear the police’s side of a story about a protest), economic (appeal to advertisers) or ideological (the Morning Star, an Phoblacht, Breitbart etc). Almost all have a mix of all.
Its impossible to be unbiased. Even if you just stick to the facts, which facts you choose and how you emphasise them will show bias. Sticking exclusively to the facts is also Itself a bias! Not to mention where you get these facts from and whose facts you trust!!
I *Want* my news to be biased! I’d much rather my news source have a consistent philosophical and ideological position and show their own logical arguments for their beliefs than try to con me into believing that what they say accurately reflects the world! At least then, I can reverse their logic to arrive at a position I think makes more sense.
As a socialist, for years when I read the news my go to was the Economist. It’s as biased as you can get (though because it’s biased towards the center right and mostly factual these online measures say its only “slightly biased” lol), but I Knew its outlook and it had no shame of that so I still found it useful.
Note – I’m assuming biased here doesn’t mean bad faith or dishonest. I believe you can argue firmly for something in a biased but honest and fair way.
When there are humans involved it’s never going to be possible to be entirely unbiased. However I think RTE do a reasonable job, I can’t really think of any Laura Kuenssberg style overtly partisan commentators, they try to give airtime to opposing sides, they try to stick to facts generally.
Most of these accusations of bias are extremely infantile anyway, they put the party some hypothetical person supports under scrutiny, said hypothetical person isn’t very intelligent and screams bias.
RTE doesn’t report false stories. My issue with it is what they place emphasis on. Half the evening news is taken up with murders, car crashes, ongoing trials for criminals. They seem to have fully embraced the tabloid mantra of ” if it bleeds it leads”. This is irresponsible, it’s unworthy of a national broadcaster, and it creates a misleading narrative. Let local news cover these stories and let national news focus on “the big picture” stuff.
To be fair RTE are fairly unbiased. Yes some shows are softer than others and don’t ask the hard questions.
Growing up a long way from the border, I was influenced a lot by RTE analysis and reporting of the troubles in the north. In the 1980s as a young adult when study, work and sport brought me frequently to Antrim, Down and Derry, I got a very different perspective of life for Catholics in the north, and why the IRA became active there in the late 1960s. Since then I paid a lot more attention to the national broadcaster and how it presented news from the six counties. For those forty years, my observation is that the station has been biased against republicanism to the point that I could not relate to Catholics from the north until I had the luck to meet enough of them who had the patience to raise my awareness of what life was like for them. It was galling for them to see RTE giving badly informed and biased coverage of the conflict there. Meanwhile they heard and saw the high quality RTE analysis and reporting of anti-government guerilla movements in Spain, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Germany, Colombia, Ethiopia and elsewhere, and understood why I trusted RTE as a source. Even today, RTE’s treatment of Sinn Fein is nothing like how they deal with the mainstream parties in the south. Even the other parties of the left generally get fair and respectful treatment. I am a member of one of those parties (Social Democrats) and am not, nor have I ever been linked in any way with Sinn Fein or any other republican party or even individuals, so my views are not influenced in any way by allegiances to anything but the truth. On every other ground I have high regard for RTE, but on this they must stand back and look honestly at themselves.
Yank here; discovered RTÉ as a news source a few years ago now, when I started searching for low/no-bias reporting on the world from outside-American sources, since there weren’t many here. No regrets at all. The echo chambers in the US feel pretty overwhelming at times; it’s nice to get the view from outside this insanity.
As much as I like to shit on RTE, the news is relatively unbiased in fairness.
For a state broadcaster they are pretty unbiased. Even here in Sweden the state news is way more biased.
Could you provide the actual reporter for some context?
On a global scale? The bar is set is set pretty low by a lot of countries state media so yeah, I’d agree with this.
They’re very good in that regard. Look at how they present the news – a carefully moderated tone where none of their biases or personal opinions colour any of it. Compare that to the joke that is Fox “News” in the US and you’ll be glad we don’t have talking assholes spewing toxic shite about whatever they think we should all be outraged by this time.
I live in the UK. I was home last week and I have to say all Radio and tv news I watched or listened to was excellent compared to UK news media
Look at Fox News and read your question. Then back at Fox News and again at your question. Do RTE have minimal bias? Yes. Yes RTE have minimal bias.
so who is giving this rating and are they unbiased?
I would agree that they are for the most part unbiased in their reporting, but on the flipside it’s evident that they pick and choose what to report.
RTE are a bit soft touch for local stuff, but for international news especially, RTE tend to be fairly on the ball.
They don’t bite the hand that feeds them — but they will nibble at it.
Factual reporting and bias aren’t mutually exclusive… I’d say what they do report is factual, but definitely chose to ignore somethings or lead debates in a direction
I wonder how hard it is to get featured on RTE. Separate from political bias one thing that pisses me off is their useless articles that are ripped straight from BuzzFeed circa 2014, i.e “Autumn Myths” etc. Or every month they seem to have an article about Maura Higgins that serves no purpose other than to keep her desperately relevant. Wouldn’t bother me if it weren’t for the fact it’s funded by the TV license.
The problem of their bias doesn’t come from the things they do broadcast, it also comes from the things they omit from their broadcasts.
Ireland has dull media. RTE isn’t going to solve any major world issues anytime soon either.
But if you think we have lying, biased media in this country you should see most other countries.
And if you compare it to the stuff on news talk and virgin media you’ll see what real bias looks like.
RTE news is amazing compared to the Polish state broadcaster which I get to see a lot of