On the 8th June, 1972, I asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs if he had issued any directive to or communicated with RTE following the 11.45 p.m. news bulletin on 22nd May, 1972. The Minister replied as reported at column 1288 of the Official Report for that date:
Apart from informing myself of the contents of the news bulletin in question I have so far taken no action in the matter.
I pointed out to him then, as I wish to point out to him now, that for the past two years I believe, with the vast majority of the Irish people, that the orders issued by the Government to RTE have been flouted by slick operators in that organisation. Certain men in that organisation have built up and glorified men of violence. They have downgraded and vilified men and women of this country both North and South who stand for a peaceful end to the unfortunate tragedies which are taking place in our midst today.
There are people there who are trying to draw a violent response when everybody should be trying to unite the people and trying to break down the hatreds and the prejudices which exist in the North and trying to create a unity of hearts and minds. There are people who are trying to bring our people into conflict and trying to bring about a Protestant backlash. If that happens we will have something that none of us wants in this country, another civil war.
I mentioned the Taoiseach's speech on the 22nd May, 1972, on Radio Éireann. He made a very responsible speech in the opinion of the majority of us, and he represents the people of this country. He said that private armies would not be allowed to operate here and that anyone breaking the law would be pursued vigorously and that if parts of the law proved ineffectual he would ask the Government to consider how they might strengthen it. He was addressing a Civil Service dinner in Dublin. Immediately after that Mr. Rory Brady of Kevin St. Sinn Féin said that it was hard to imagine what further strengthening could be done in the Offences Against the State Act. He said that any extension of coercive legislation would not be accepted passively by Republicans.
I want to know what authority had those people to put this man on the air who represents nobody. We are entitled to ask what does he mean by "will not be accepted passively by Republicans"? Does he want a repetition here of what is going on in Northern Ireland? I believe that he and, unfortunately, also a small clique in RTE want to have the same type of violence here as there is in Northern Ireland today. We are entitled to ask have those people got a standing arrangement to contact such people at all hours of the night. Do employees of this State body go out of their way to get the views of gunmen and others and to belittle and play down the considered views of elected representatives in this House, irrespective of what party they may belong to.
I should also like to ask the Minister were members of the elected Opposition, the leader of the Opposition party, Deputy Cosgrave, or the leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Corish, asked to comment on this statement. If not, why were people who represent very few people and who are out to bring down the institutions of the State asked to comment on this important statement by the Taoiseach? On the early news the next morning we had nothing from Mr. Brady, but the words "political prisoners" were put into somebody's mouth in connection with people on remand. On the 9 o'clock news on 23rd May, 1972, we had a report from Kevin St. and from Gardiner St. and again, not a word from the elected representatives of the people.
I certainly support free speech. Since the foundation of the State the party to which I have the honour to belong have supported free speech and have stood by free speech. I do not want to see free speech abused by any institution of the State and especially by people who are paid by the State. I do not want to see members of any institution of the State trying to bring down another institution of the State.
I do not stand for censorship but Radio Éireann is supposed to be and in my opinion should be a national broadcasting service with strict standards of impartiality. I want to see responsible reporting and balanced journalism. As far as Northern Ireland reporting and the escalation of violence in the Six Counties and the drift towards anarchy are concerned we are not getting responsible reporting and balanced journalism from the irresponsible fellow travellers in RTE. They have built up certain people out of all proportion. They have built up Mr. Brady and John Stevenson. They would be unknown but for the platform given to them on RTE. What authority have they to call John Stevenson the Chief of Staff of the IRA? Do they know he is Chief of Staff? If he is, why has he not been prosecuted as Chief of Staff of the IRA?
In passing I should like to quote from a leading article in The Independent of October 4th in which it is stated:
It is a corollary of the right of free speech that the public have a right freely to hear all sides of a question.
I claim that the public today are not hearing all sides of the question from certain elements in RTE. I do not listen to Radio Éireann or Telefís Éireann very often but I want to give the House certain instances of what I believe is very unfair and certainly not impartial reporting. To me it is not responsible journalism. Last September a lady was questioning Mr. Brady on RTE. She was speaking about internment and the question she asked him—she put the words into his mouth—was: "You should know all about concentration camps because you have been in one yourself". I claim that nobody employed by the State—even if we had internment which we have not—should refer to an internment camp as a concentration camp. This lady played into his hands and he made all the political capital he could out of it. He ended by stating his aims. When she asked him, he said his aims were to bring down Stormont and then to bring down Leinster House. I heard that interview myself. I took a note of it and that is exactly what was said.
On 5th June bombs exploded outside a building at 3.15 a.m. and four or five people were killed. We got a report from RTE which is supposed to provide impartial reporting and responsible journalism that at 3.15 a.m. a woman who was in bed saw a car coming from a Protestant area, planting the bombs and disappearing up the road again. I heard that myself two or three times that day. Is that responsible reporting or responsible journalism? To my mind it is not because, while they were saying that, other broadcasting services were giving the truth about what happened in that unfortunate incident.
I said last week that the Minister for Justice is no friend of mine but as long as he does his duty and upholds law and order I, for one, will stand 100 per cent behind him. Last week he issued a statement. RTE mentioned this statement and they put words in his mouth which he had not used. They talked about political prisoners and Republican prisoners. Again that is not the impartial reporting or responsible journalism which we should be able to expect from this body.
A few months ago a bomb exploded in the back of a house in Belfast and four or five unfortunate people who were handling the bomb were killed. On three occasions on that day RTE mentioned that a car —they even knew the colour of it; it was a white Mercedes—was seen coming from the Protestant area and planting the bomb and disappearing. What we want is the truth and not this kind of biased reporting. Last Saturday, 10th June, on the 6.30 news Mr. Timlin interviewed a man about the hunger striker who had escaped. They always seem to interview a certain type of man. The man interviewed said that he should never have been imprisoned, that it was completely wrong to imprison this particular man. They got that interview but they did not get the report in The Irish Press on Wednesday, 7th June, that this particular individual “has already served 15 months of an 11-year sentence. He was jailed following a £16,000 armed robbery on a Belfast business last year”. Now this is the kind of biassed reporting we get on RTE and I, for one, do not stand for it.
On the morning after the people's property in Mountjoy had been destroyed we were told on the 8 a.m. news that the prisoners returned to their cells after a parley with the authorities. This was a deliberate lie and it was conferring a status on these people to which they were not entitled. However, on the 8.30 a.m. news they gave the truth. Those words had to be contradicted and we were told the truth; the prisoners went back to their cells after an ultimatum from the Army.
I also remember the day on which Cardinal Conway made a statement on internment. It was mentioned: RTE again gave publicity to that part of the statement that dealt with and condemned internment but they conveniently omitted to mention the part of his statement which was concerned with violence. Now this was a reasonably balanced statement; in it he condemned violence and the violence of the IRA that had led up to it. RTE failed to mention that.
I want to say here and now that the late Joe McCann was murdered by British troops. We should state the truth. But the late Joe McCann was made a hero of and a little God by RTE. We were not told the whole truth. We were not told what the IRA journals claimed that he did and the number of deaths in Northern Ireland for which he was supposed to be responsible.
As far as the programme "Féach" is concerned, this is an old pals' act because in that programme the Provos and the Officials are given an inordinate amount of time for blatant propaganda. That has been happening now for a long time. There are, of course, slick operators on this and at times they can play things down. Radio Telefís Éireann officials and some of the people in command there are certainly not consistent. I have had arguments with them, particularly when I was Chief Whip of the Fine Gael Party, about the amount of violence portrayed on television and how it always came first. If you turned on, it was always violence, violence all over the world. They told me that was what people were interested in. That may be but, when it suits them, they are not consistent. Violence, as I have said so often, is getting too much prominence. When, however, an armed raid took place in Edgeworthstown and six men held up the town for half an hour, that evening the episode was the fourth item on the 9.30 p.m. news. It was downgraded because the IRA were concerned in it. We had two cases of robberies in the South shortly afterwards. Gardaí were fired on. These two incidents were mentioned No. 8 and No. 9 on the news. But they got the bannerlines in both the evening and the morning papers. Captain Walker's death was played down. They stated they believed it was only an ordinary robbery and the people were led to believe there was nothing political in it. A bullet was found in his leg. It was never mentioned on either television or radio. An Irish boy from Dublin south-west home on holidays from the British Army went out for a drink and he was taken away and murdered and thrown across the Border. It was played down. Were cameras sent to the church? Were cameras sent to the graveyard? They certainly were not.
The Health initiatives were played down. John Stephenson an hour or so after the Health initiatives being mentioned, from the security of the Twenty-six Counties, could call upon the people to continue the fight. The so-called free elections in Derry have been built up out of all proportion to their importance by RTE. Pure propaganda. Radio Telefís Éireann teams were sent up there to glorify those men of violence. An unfortunate pregnant woman was tarred, feathered and beaten with hurleys by certain people in the name of Ireland, a free Ireland, people who are supposed to stand for free speech and civil rights. We had a statement from RTE that she was an informer and a drug peddler. The cheek and the impertinence of those people to make such an accusation and to try to excuse the perpetrators of this foul act, because that is what it was. Even if she was what they said she was, which she was not, who were they to condemn her or anybody else? There was no foundation for the statement they made, a statement broadcast all over the length and breadth of this country. God knows, her husband and her family and she herself were hurt enough without having that blah-blah all over the length and breadth of this country.
What I am going to say now refers to myself and to the little whatever-you-like-to-call-them in Telefís Éireann: if all our sins were printed on our foreheads we would prefer to meet a blind man rather than a scholar any day of the week and the people in the position they are in should not have got away with this and action should have been taken against them before this.
We are also told on RTE that people are executed by the IRA. What authority have they to use words in this fashion? If a person is shot, we hear that a Catholic has been murdered, a Protestant has been shot and other people have been executed. I claim RTE have no authority to use these terms in this way.
They have also played down the women's march in Derry, the women's march for peace. The lead story all that evening on the BBC was the women's march and their demand for peace. We know that 90 per cent of the Catholics in the North and 99 per cent of the people down here want peace. But not the boyos in RTE. The women's march got only two lines in the first news report that evening. As "Backbencher" said in The Irish Times on 27th May, 1972, they managed a fair report on the problem of an Irish restaurant owner, complete with a recorded interview with Mike Foot, “and God love him too, and my compliments to the public relations officer who managed this. A good show.”
Is that kind of reporting on RTE fair by any standards? We had an interview at the very same time with Mr. Myers. In my opinion he insulted Fr. O'Neill. I want to know what authority has Mr. Myers to point out to Fr. O'Neill that he was not exactly speaking from a value free position. He asked Fr. O'Neill was he not on record as saying he was like an ant in the IRA woodwork, working away for its destruction.
I believe we have too many little ants in RTE like Mr. Myers working away for the destruction of this State and the freedom we have today, the freedom so dearly won for us by real patriots through the blood, the sweat, the toil and the tears of past generations and it is time, indeed, that the value free position of this gentleman was fully understood by RTE. Mr. Myers used the word "dangerous" in regard to the talk of a prospect of confrontation between the Officials and the Provos. Dangerous for whom? Dangerous, is it, for the sympathisers in RTE who are trying to build up the IRA, who ask on every occasion, would we have got this only for the IRA or would we have got that only for the IRA? The sooner something is done about these people the better. They are doing their damndest to encourage sectarian warfare and a Protestant backlash in this country.
