The Irish General Election

Have to disagree with that, Ireland Live News is actually decent most of the time. RTE is better than TV3 at domestic news as TV3 doesn't seem to have any resources outside of Dublin except for a Cork Correspondent who's relying on PR releases for a lot of his stories. (I don't blame him, I would say he has a lot to do).

At the same time RTE reporters have an agenda or get things very wrong quite often. Naming no names, but there was a report on RTE about the UK referendum which would have given you the impression that while Scotland was pro EU, that the North would be voting to leave. That same reporter also claimed a few months ago that Hilary Clinton / Carly Fiorina presidential race was a real possibility (when Carly was polling at 1% with republicans) so if they're wrong about these sorts of thing, what else are they wrong about. That's why it's good to have more than one News outlet.

As for UPC Customers, they're always annoyed about something

You said that the reporter who made a mistake about Scotland's attitude to the EU also made a mistake about the race to the White House. Are you sure about that? RTÉ has a correspondent for London and another for Washington.

UPC customers lost access to a lot of good quality ITV programmes when UTV Ireland replaced UTV (NI) because of UTV Ireland not having the rights to non-ITV Studios products.

100 percent, the two stories were done back at base, just a voice over pictures. I know the name of the reporter plus have had conversations with others that noticed it, (especially the USA piece) Washington reporter was probably on holiday at the time, and the London correspondent is only one person, they don't cover everything. I'm not saying that RTE is terrible but it does operate in the real world were it has a share of reporters which have agendas, who are dead weight, or like all of us get things wrong from time to time.
That's why having more than one Irish News TV outlet is important.



Of course this is true but two points here. UTV only had 3 percent viewership when it changed to UTV Ireland. It was the second most watched TV channel for years, but TV3 Chipped away at it, plus ITV programmes aren't as attractive as they used to be. However, when it was changed the amount of complaints from people was nuts. Practically all shows are still available on UTV or TV3, you might have to wait 24 hours or a little longer for some but that's scheduling. All the big films that went out on UTV (NI) were available to UPC customers over Christmas usually on RTE1 or 2 but to listen to them they were hugely deprived. If they had kept watching UTV at the same rate that they had been watching it 10 years previously (Around 13 percent) UTV Ireland would never have been needed in the first place.

Secondly I remember when a TD was elected to the Dail on the issue of BBC and ITV, Dublin Cable viewers I knew laughed at what a silly issue to run on. As soon as the boot is on the other foot it was like the world had come to an end. Maybe the voters in Donegal and UPC customers should turn off their telly and get some fresh air instead. (that's a joke just in case some people don't get it just like my previous UPC remark)

I think that you may be going a bit far with this comment:



You're effectively accusing RTE News in general as not being impartial and being incapable of reporting the news accurately, and systematically regularly making mistakes - that's quite an allegation to make.

All news organisations can make mistakes, but I don't RTE News "get things very wrong quite often".

First of all, I would say that all news organisations DO make mistakes, the question we have to ask ourselves when is it just honest occasional mistakes and when is it an agenda. Many Parties running for the current election would suggest that RTE are an organisation that has an agenda, I don't think that necessarily but I do think that certain reporters have a point of view that comes across in their reporting. In one or two cases it is an agenda.

As for reports I have expertise in certain areas, I have friends that have expertise in other areas. Quite often on RTE news the report has just been incorrect or some part of a story has been hyped up. Now I am not an expert on almost every other topic (I would like to think i'm average but i might be deluding myself!) but if they're wrong about the things I know about, what else are they misreporting? To be fair they're not the worst offender. Having said that here are a few links to some of the more serious ones.

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/rte-gaza-woman-1591326-Jul2014/

http://www.longfordleader.ie/news/local-news/111525/Lanesboro-priest-secures-defamation-payout-from.html

That's why it's so important to have more than one source of TV news for any nation.

I don't have a problem with your statement that it's important to have more than one TV news outlet, but suggesting that RTE News "gets things very wrong quite often" is pushing things a bit. You are suggesting that the organisation has a systemic problem by making a statement like that and I just don't think that is the case.

We can all come up with the odd story here and there where the wrong angle has perhaps been taken within all news organisations and some of them are well known, but I refuse to believe that there is a deep rooted bias within RTE News, or that they regularly "get things very wrong".

Again I never said that there was a deep rooted bias within RTE news, just that some would have an agenda, plus it's not the odd story but I have deadlines to meet and haven't got the time to go looking around the internet for links. However I would have to disagree with you on the getting things very wrong, they do so fairly regularly. But that is my point of view and the view of many of my friends.

Now confirmed that BBC Parliament will take RTE coverage from 18:35-21-00 on Saturday.

As I mentioned elsewhere Virgin Media will run what little TV3 are doing on channel 996.

That's kinda poor from the BBC, considering the RTE coverage begins at 8am with Morning Ireland, and continues until 3am, then again Sunday morning into Sunday afternoon. The way this is looking, it seems like a dip in basically, it's not even going to be a full roundup by the point. Yes, the TV3 programme will probably be a full roundup, but again, it's a shame that they are doing nothing before that.

I wouldn't be too worried about the start of the BBC Parliament coverage. Until early evening on Saturday, there is not going to anything to report except pure speculation.

However, it really should continue until close of coverage on RTE as all of the excitement happens from early evening until early morning.

Saturday afternoon should see some of the first results come in, with maybe a couple of seats in the new Dail Eireann being decided. There should be first preference declarations for more than half of the constituencies. However, I don't think we'll get a clear idea until after 9pm. Which is why I think the chosen time is very poor, as it won't be much more than a dip in, catch a few declarations, and a few seats being filled, and not much more. It's almost as though the BBC want you to watch it on the online RTE News Now service, rather than over their airwaves.

They've gone for a new look this time, with a circular device with different colours as the logo instead of the ballot boxes they had been using since 2011. We won't see most of the graphics until declarations start coming in from about 3:00pm onwards - it's mainly discussion of the exit poll and tallies.

One furthe thing to note is that while RTE Radio 1 is using the music that RTE was using for its pre-election promos (replacing a long running piece they previously used) RTE TV is using a different theme.