Ireland’s media watchdog Coimisiún na Meán has just given the green light to RTÉ to let standards slip even lower when it comes to one-sided coverage of the abortion issue.

Coimisiún na Meán’s decision this week not to uphold complaints submitted by the Pro Life Campaign and others regarding the extremely biased RTÉ Investigates programme on abortion that aired last year, shows that the new media regulator has a deep-seated impartiality problem of its own when it comes to adjudicating on these matters.

The RTÉ Investigates programme, which aired last April, was arguably the single most biased broadcast on abortion that RTÉ ever put on air.

For Coimisiún na Meán to find no fault whatsoever with the programme and to claim it adhered to the highest standards expected in public service broadcasting is an insult to the intelligence of the viewing public and raises extremely serious questions about Coimisiún na Meán’s ability to ensure even the most basic standards of fairness and impartiality in public broadcasting into the future.

For a programme that purported to be “about examining the operation of abortion provision under
the new law,” RTÉ Investigates made the totally unjustified decision to only look at the operation of
the law through a pro-abortion lens.

The programme aired for one hour and five minutes in a prime time slot. It interviewed abortion advocates, one after another, and in the course of the entire programme never interviewed a single pro-life representative. The only pro-lifers mentioned was when the programme makers and guests were disparaging pro-life individuals, who in turn were afforded no on air opportunity to defend their reputations and good names.

There was no mention of Ireland’s soaring abortion rate. No mention of the obscene reality that happens under the new law where babies that survive late-term abortions are left to die alone in hospital corners without receiving any human warmth or medical care. There was no mention of the reality of coercive abortion in Ireland, including the case that was reported in the media concerning a woman who was locked in a room and forced to take the abortion pill. These examples and countless others that could be cited are all worthy of inclusion in any programme claiming to be taking a thorough look at how the abortion law is operating in practice.

Rather than respond comprehensively to the very serious issues raised in the complaints, Coimisiún na Meán, in its reply, latched onto RTÉ’s get out of jail disclaimer at the start of the programme that it was not “looking at the rights and wrongs of abortion” but was only examining the operation of abortion provision under the new law.

By accepting at face value this one line explainer at the start of the programme, Coimisiún na Meán is in effect saying to RTÉ: as long as you insert a throwaway disclaimer at the outset of every programme, feel free to proceed forward with as slanted and biased a programme as you want and Coimisiún na Meán will be on standby at the end to give you protective cover from any subsequent complaints that may arise.

For the record, the Pro Life Campaign’s complaint didn’t focus on the decision of the programme makers not to look at the “rights and wrongs of abortion’. It is a pure invention on Coimisiún na Meán’s part to imply that it formed the basis for our complaint. One can only speculate on the motivation behind this – either Coimisiún na Meán didn’t bother to read our complaint properly or they chose to pluck a non-issue out of thin air so as to avoid having to address the very serious issues we raised.

It is bad enough that RTÉ gave the go ahead for such a wholly biased programme to air, but for Coimisiún na Meán to give it a thumbs-up and refuse to take issue with any of its shortcomings is truly egregious. It’s a clear case of one taxpayer funded body providing cover for another.

Meanwhile, the taxpayers themselves have no recourse or way of forcing accountability. The fact that Coimisiún na Meán is only announcing its decision now, almost one year on from the date that the programme aired, is another sign of their cavalier disregard for the TV licence fee paying public.

Coimisiún na Meán acting as a protective shield for RTÉ is a perfect illustration of everything that’s wrong with certain public institutions in Ireland today, and why an ever increasing number of people are losing all trust in said institutions.

After the programme aired last year, the Pro Life Campaign called for a Special Oireachtas Committee to be set up to examine editorial bias in RTÉ. The proposal received a much warmer reception from TDs than we ever expected. We repeat our call today for this committee to be convened and we’ll work extremely hard in the coming months to try and make it happen. Coimisiún na Meán’s decision to adopt such an offhand attitude to safeguarding fairness and impartiality in public broadcasting ought to be included in any examination of the issue by the Oireachtas. We will press for this as well.

One parting thought – next time you hear a representative of Coimisiún na Meán on the airwaves waxing lyrical about how they are monitoring closely and working tirelessly to combat “misinformation” and “disinformation” around every corner, bring to mind this story and the powerful opportunity they had to do something about it and failed spectacularly.

Read Pro Life Campaign’s official complaint about the RTÉ programme here
Read Coimisiún na Meán’s decision not to uphold the PLC’s complaint here