Eoghan Harris (Independent)

Some weeks ago a prominent academic in Northern Ireland revealed that there was soft support for the dissident IRA from no less than 18.4% of the Nationalist community. In that ominous context, it is beyond belief that RTE News would put out two minutes last night, at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., of what amounted to an inflammatory montage of what looked like police brutality. Everyone in the trade knows that a montage is cutting shots out of context for maximum dramatic impact. Consider the impact on the public, especially on the young men whom the prominent Northern academic revealed as particularly susceptible to supporting the dissidents because they have no memory of the horrors of the armed struggle. To put that out without context represents a serious dereliction of duty on the part of the head of news and his staff.

The Opposition parties may be in Government soon. Are they going to be facing a situation where, on one front, we are facing economic meltdown and, in Northern Ireland, dissident support among young people is rising while RTE News continues to shove out negative propaganda and allow a minority of its staff to put out inflammatory montage? The footage of Rodney King being beaten up was a continuous shot that went on for five to seven minutes. These were shots cut out of context. We have no means of knowing, where a policeman lifted his baton, what might have happened to him before that. It is recognised all over the world that this is not done in a broadcasting service. It is despicable. Yesterday, the Leader welcomed the new director general of RTE, Noel Curran. His first duty should be to ask the chairman of the authority to ask the head of news to account for what happened last night on the news at six o'clock.

Lenin had a phrase for that type of useless bombing assassination propaganda among infantile left-wingers. He called it excitative terror, that sort of stupid inflammatory stuff. He had another phrase for those people who engage in it. He called them useful idiots.