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IMR Comment:

In a strongly worded report, Family and Media Association (FMA) once again draw attention to RTE's failure to achieve impartiality in its coverage of life related issues.

This is made clear in FMA's recently issued report for two quarters of 1998.

In all, eighteen programme items were examined.  Twelve dealt with abortion and six with embryo abuse.

The overall imbalance on an airtime basis, excluding neutral contributions, was 37% in favour of the liberal viewpoint.  The imbalance in the case of embryo-abuse items alone was 48% in favour of the liberal viewpoint.

This reflects what seems to be RTE's stance - that those empoyed or making money from the practices under discussion can be brought in as "experts" to give apparently neutral advice on statistics or practice.  See report on Prime Time of 15 June 1999.

This is a stance that must be challenged.  The very presence of such persons lends support to the "respectability" of their activity, the very matter under question.

FMA's short report will be posted here shortly.  It is available on FMA's newsletter Media Report for Spring 2000, price £1 including postage.  The full report, with tables, is given in FMA's Monitoring Report Media Balance, availabe from FMA, PO Box 6489, Blackrock, Co Dublin, price £25, including postage.
 
Information on this page published by kind permission of Family and Media Association.

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