Look at the headline on this RTE News story from yesterday:
RTE’s headline claims that Professor Luke O’Neill has said that it “might be time to slow down the re-opening”.
There is only one problem, and that is as follows: O’Neill said nothing of the sort.
What did he say? Well, you have to dig into the story to find that out. Paragraph fifteen, in fact:
Speaking on RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor programme he added: “If we see an increase in severe disease from the Indian variant in the UK, it might be time to slow down the reopening slightly here.”
Prof O’Neill said the next three or four weeks are critical. “We have a race now to get the vaccine out. Once Israel had reached 70% of people having the double shots, then they opened up more.
In other words, he said that if Ireland happened to see a surge in new cases related to the Indian variant, Ireland might have to slow down the re-opening “slightly”. Somehow, that got translated by the RTE headline writers as “it might be time to slow down the re-opening”, with the clear implication that Dr. O’Neill meant that this slowdown was required now, today, because of what is currently happening.
That is, needless to say, highly misleading. And well beneath the standards of accuracy one should expect from a national broadcaster.
It is, unfortunately, entirely in keeping with RTE’s approach to reporting the issues around Covid. Every single story seems to be portrayed in the most fear-inspiring possible way.
On Saturday night, for example, viewers of the Nine O’clock news were treated to apocalyptic warnings of the consequences of people socialising in Dublin. Variants were mentioned, Zero Covid campaigners were featured, and a tweet from the Chief Medical Officer criticising the revellers was given pride of place. Nowhere during the broadcast was any alternative view provided. Nobody, for example, was given airtime to point out that NPHET’s own figures show that only 0.1% of total covid cases are linked to outdoor transmission. Nobody was invited on to point out that the Government has repeatedly urged people to prepare for an “outdoor summer”.
Nobody, either, was invited on to make the point that nothing that was taking place in Dublin was in contravention of any Covid regulation.
All of this, of course, was in contrast to the treatment of the anti-Israeli marches in Dublin just ten days before, when thousands marched through the City Centre. RTE covered those protests, but not as much as a murmur of concern about the variants, social distancing, or a risk to the re-opening as a result of such a mass gathering got any airtime on RTE. Once again, viewers of the national broadcaster have been witnesses to the miracle of the socially-conscious coronavirus, which only inflicts its wrath upon the immoral and feckless, while leaving left-wing events in peace.
But not content with spinning every story in the worst possible light for the re-opening, RTE have now taken it a step further, by mis-quoting Dr. Luke O’Neill. He definitively did not say that it might be time to slow the re-opening. He offered a conditional policy option to be considered weeks from now, if things do not go well.
RTE’s headline is definitively, and absolutely, FALSE.