Reporting on Gaza: RTE is in breach of its own principles and, possibly, the law.
The nation's public broadcaster must review its news reporting values.
RTE sources news from global media groups that have agreed to have their news pre-approved by the Israeli Military Censor (IMC). This is in breach of RTE’s own principles, which it has promised the Irish public to uphold.
RTE has 8 guiding principles. Its fundamental guiding principle – listed first as its primary one – is:
Independence: we are independent from political, commercial, and other influences
Circulating news to the Irish public without adding a disclaimer that it has been pre-approved by the military of a foreign country is grossly misleading.
The Israeli Military Censor is a unit in the IDF Directorate of Military intelligence tasked with carrying out preventative censorship inside the state of Israel regarding the publication information that might affect the security of Israel. The body is headed by the Israeli Chief Censor, a military official appointed by Israel's Minister of Defense, who gives the Chief Censor the authority to suppress information he deems compromising from being made public in the media.
RTE is an independent organisation free from political, commercial and other influences while the Israeli Military Censor exists solely to control the information distributed by news organisations. We can see a conflict emerging here.
Who does the Israeli Military Censor control?
Since October, the Israeli Military Censor has issued unprecedented orders in English to Western news organisations. Foreign journalists working in Israel must obtain government permission, including a declaration that they will abide by the censor.
Omer-Man, former Editor in Chief of Israel’s +972 magazine and director of research for Israel-Palestine at Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN), spoke with Middle East Monitor about the censor, saying “In order to get a visa as a journalist, you have to get approval from GPO [Government Press Office,] and therefore you have to sign a document that says you will comply with the censor. That in itself is probably against the ethics guidelines at a bunch of papers.”
Given RTE’s primary value is Independence, we can see an immediate conflict between RTE’s stated guiding principles and the role of the Israeli Military Censor.
So the next question is, has RTE agreed – directly or indirectly – to have the news it reports to the Irish people pre-reviewed by the Israeli Military Censor?
The answer is yes, and here’s how:
RTE sources much of its international news from news media syndicates, such as AFP/Reuters. Many of these organisations have submitted to the Israeli Military censor and must grant it pre-publication review rights. News RTE publishes on Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank is regularly sourced from organisations that have agreed to have their news pre-reviewed the Israeli Military Censor.
RTE has not declared that to the Irish people, which is in breach of the principles it has promised to uphold.
The Israeli Military Censor Chief is appointed by the Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant. Gallant gives full authority to the Chief Military Censor to suppress any and all information he deems compromising from being made public in the media.
Gallant is a far-right Minister in Netanyahu’s right wing Likud Party. He has participated in military campaigns where war crimes have been reported, particularly during his time as a military general in ground offensives on Gaza, most notably Operation Cast Lead in 2008.
More recently, he has publicly used openly genocidal language. The below are his words, made before he ordered a brutal siege on Gaza in October.
"There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed," he said. "We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly."
Gallant has considerable influence over news that is circulated globally, including publications like RTE news. Although the Chief Censor, Brig. Gen Kobi Mandelblit, is independent from the minister, he has issued complaints recently that extraordinary political pressure has been put on him to prevent publication of various events in the media without any security justification.
This should alarm all of us who trust and rely on our public braodcaster for fair and balanced news coverage.
Censorship must be declared. A social media influencer cannot promote a product on social media without declaring their business relationship with the product or service they are promoting. But RTE can distribute serious news to a nation without declaring the censors that have controlled the narrative.
Does this seem transparent to you?
Observe closely how RTE reports on what the ICJ has ruled is a plausible genocide in Gaza. Notice the language it uses and the bias in favour of the Israeli narrative. It’s important to understand where that bias originates and how our independent broadcaster has published news that has not just been influenced by, but controlled, by foreign political interests.
RTE is not independent from political or other influence and must declare this.
Join me in demanding that RTE publishes a disclosure at the beginning of each news article that has been pre-approved by the Israeli Military Censor.
You can click on this link to send a pre-written email to RTE or, if you prefer, send you own email to complaints@rte.ie
You can reference your concern that RTE is in breach of its principle of independence from political or other influence and Section 46 L (1) (b) of The Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022. The section states the following:
“That the treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current public debate, is fair to all interests concerned, and that the matter broadcast or made available is presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s or provider’s own views.”
Thank you for this. Sharing your article. I’ve been monitoring RTEs online print coverage of the war in Gaza and in most if not all cases, a simple Boolean search of any paragraph of an RTE report shows multiple copies across the web. Copy and pasted sentence by sentence Reuters feeds. At best it’s really shoddy and lazy reporting. Coupled with the banning of Palestinian artists ( like poet Rafeef Ziadah from the Arts show) from its airwaves citing ‘balance’ this looks terribly like bias. Coupled with numerous ‘interviews’ with Israeli spokespeople in which questions put to them are ignored yet the interview is not terminated despite the spokesperson not co operating and in some cases being downright abusive to the broadcaster- looks again like bias. Coupled with the precious few reports from actual RTE journalists in Tel Aviv, usually with an Israeli flag somewhere in the background, acting as if they are ‘embedded’ with Israel - looks very much like bias.
Occasional interviews with Fatah spokespeople and to my knowledge none with Hamas who like or loath them are the actual political representatives of the people of Gaza - also reeks of bias. Interviews with Irish national surgeons who have been to Gaza for short stints yet to my knowledge interviewing Irish born Dr Ahmed Mokhallati just twice last year also beggars belief. This brave man is literally at the centre of the hurricane and he could be our eyes on the ground. Yet RTE apart from a human interest story, has not felt the need to speak to him more often. He was actually in Ireland briefly.
To cap it off, RTE to my knowledge has not conducted even a morsel of real investigative journalism over the war. Even CNN has made efforts to gain independent information. Not RTE.
The link is not working. Well done on this campaign