Colin Sheridan: Holding RTÉ to account — why its coverage of Palestine raises serious journalistic concerns
While much of Fran McNulty's 10-minute interview was wasted on Francesca Albanese, above, having to correct the language of the interviewer, it was in that withering nano-second we saw what happens when arrogance meets grace. Picture: Brian Lawless
"If you come at the king,” Omar Little told his would-be assassins in , “you’d best not miss.”
His words rang like the bells of the Angelus last week, as RTÉ’s flagship news programme took verbal aim at Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, who was giving her four millionth interview about the continuing genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
Maybe the broadcaster thought she’d be too tired to land any counter-punches, maybe they figured they’d play devil’s advocate by offering an alternative point of view. Whatever the stations strategy, it backfired badly.
Over the course of two interviews on and , Albanese faced the consistent and concerted parroting of the same lines RTÉ has been using since October 7: Israel denies this, Hamas has done that.
In Albanese, they finally found someone articulate enough to push back.
“How much blame does Hamas need to accept for what’s happening [in Gaza]?” presenter Fran McNulty asked the Italian human rights lawyer — perhaps not unreasonably given recent protests against Hamas in Gaza — just as their interview concluded.
Timing is everything, however, and it should be noted that what was happening in Gaza literally as they spoke was Israel murdering over 500 Palestinians in just three days. The footage which was circulated that morning was some of the most harrowing to date.
In response, a clearly bewildered Albanese leaned back in her chair, arms folded, and calmly — yet meticulously — picked apart yet another question that seemed designed to act as some kind of GOTCHA! soundbite.
What the question actually was was an unsubtle variation on the “do you condemn Hamas?” shtick that broadcasters, such as RTÉ and the BBC, have consistently used as a method of both eating up time during potentially difficult interviews with intellectually superior guests and as a way of positing those guests as spokespeople for a “terror group”.
Some 18 months on, it’s a tired trope — and one Albanese grew weary of long ago. If anybody at had done their homework and watched a sample size of the special rapporteur’s interviews from the last couple of years, they would’ve known such “rope a dope” nonsense — she has repeatedly denounced Hamas violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians, as well as calling for the hostages from both sides to be released — could only end one way for the State broadcaster: In embarrassment.
I won’t waste my word count on the semantics of her response, only to say there was a moment — after a long and deliberate uncomfortable silence that Albanese insisted McNulty sit through — that she answered his question with a few of her own.
She bookended these questions by using his name — “Fran” — as a mother might when trying to hold an errant son to account. It was unfortunate for McNulty because, for a brief moment, he became a proxy for an entire media organisation.
In her uttering of a single, excruciating syllable, the hypocrisy of RTÉ was laid bare.
While much of the 10-minute interview was wasted on Albanese having to correct the language of the interviewer (labelling the genocide a “war”, discussing a non-existent ceasefire), it was in that withering nano-second we saw what happens when the arrogance of an institution meets the grace of an enlightened individual — and the individual finally said “enough.”
The same can be said of its treatment of Sinn Féin when compared to that of other political parties.
If you emerged from a time capsule today and were even indifferent to conflict in the Middle East, you couldn’t but find RTÉ’s editorial line on Israel and Palestine, Gaza and genocide, the Hamas-run health ministry, and the supposedly democratic state of Israel all a little bit odd.
That they platform who they do — Alan Shatter, Dana Elrich — and ignore who they ignore, stinks of hubris and superiority.
Given RTÉ’s turbulent times of late, they have nothing to be superior about. It also reeks of a subservience to empire that appears common-place amongst supposedly reputable institutions.
It reeks of an in-house reckoning that, though they recognise the mass killing of children as bad, the empire — in this case the illegal occupier, Israel — somehow knows better; that the tax-paying viewers don’t know the full story; and that to question them is the act not of a well-informed citizen or journalist — but a leftist hippy who should get a real job.
Francesca Albanese has a real job, and RTÉ should’ve understood what it was before they wasted her time on pathetic attempts at baiting her for an incendiary response.
When this genocide that they call a war ends, journalists from State broadcasters such as RTÉ will travel to occupied Palestine and stand on the rubble of a million lives, and — with furrowed brows and heavy hearts — lament the “needless loss of life”. Some will even write books about it.
Perhaps then we will learn why they use the language they do and pursue the lines of questioning they so diligently pursue. Perhaps, but I doubt it.
What I don’t doubt is that, last week, they came at the queen ... and missed.
