RTE.ie Joins the Cheerleaders?

Anyone check out the homepage of news on the economy from RTE today? Aside from the fact that there's not much news since Thursday, they've made Apache Pizza's expansion plans their top story. I can see why they'd want to report something positive, but some stories just aren't top-of-the-page news. A pizza chain creating 100 jobs is one of them. Other stories bear a remarkable similarity to the press releases over at the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment.

Another item, which shows how consumer sentiment is continuing to tank, is headlined 'survey shows consumers still cautious' - as if that's a strange thing! Has RTE.ie suspended its critical judgement to become a cheerleader?

Set George Free!

I've just stumbled across a very interesting interview with George Lee on RTE. Here's the clip:

From my reading of it, he appears to be either insinuating pressure not to criticise the government, or that he can't really tell the full story about what's happened (ie: FF F**ked up) while still remaining politically neutral.

The former would be sinister - though not surprising given the Cowen picture debacle - and the latter makes a joke of public service broadcasting's primary goal: telling the truth about what's happening. Lee is an economist of the highest integrity and ability, and should be able to give his professional opinion on the current financial crisis. If he objectively decides that the government messed up, but the opposition's plans to resolve the crisis are errant nonsense, that's his analysis - not him banging a particular political drum.

RTE bosses should do the right thing - set George Lee free on our airwaves to tell us just what happened to get the country in this state, and what will happen now.