Occupy protesters ignored by RTE

 

Central Bank Plaza. Before and after the Gardai moved in

The Irish police (Gardai) took down Dublin’s Occupy Dame Street protest camp during the night. The reason being that the site was needed for next week’s St Patrick’s Day parade and to enable thousands of tourists freer access to be drunk and disorderly in Temple Bar next weekend.

RTE’s radio news reported on the Gardai action. Morning Ireland, the state’s largest audience radio programme, had a journalist reporting from the site live this morning. He gave an account of what had happened during the night and what was happening now. So we were told that there were 10 people who had been in the Dublin Occupy camp still present at the site. However for some bizarre reason, possibly called censorship, RTE did not interview any of the people who were the lead item on the news bulletin.

Within minutes Morning Ireland followed up with an item on the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s finding yesterday that the TV station had erred in how it reported tweets during the presidential election campaign debates on TV.

So it seems that RTE is quite strict in protecting the airwaves from radical social justice  protesters but not from erroneous tweets.