Brendan O’ReganLast week I was complaining about media bias. This week it’ll have to be media numeracy. On Wednesday night of last week, I was curious to see how the media would report on the media bias protest outside Dáil Éireann. RTÉ News that night gave it a littlecoverage and estimated the turnout at around 1,500.…
Category: TV & Radio
No escaping same-sex marriage debate
TV and Radio with Brendan O’Regan
A good range of faith topics from RTÉ
Courtney McGrailTV and Radio with Brendan O’Regan
Different portrayals of religious life
I thought I detected a faint distaste on the scriptwriter’s part towards the nuns and religious life.
50 Shades of Grey treated like a bit of a lark
There was a revolting hoopla surrounding the release of the film at the weekend
More one-sided debates on abortion
As an avid collector of ironies, I hit the jackpot last week. Liberal media commentators were horrified that Pope Francis didn’t see a problem with slapping children for corrective purposes, but actively argued for aborting more children by widening Irish abortion laws! The latest wave in this debate started Wednesday of last week with a…
If it’s religious, it must be Sunday
It’s understandable that so many religious programmes are concentrated on Sundays. Some may feel it puts religion in a media ghetto, but in a way it’s also showing sensitivity to the Lord’s Day. On last Sunday morning’s Sunday Sequence (BBC Radio Ulster), Audrey Carville presented a timely item on the morality of paying hostage takers: should…
Same-sex marriage dominates the media
Last week felt like ‘Same-Sex Marriage Week’. Monday evening saw the start of a new series on RTÉ 1, Claire Byrne Live. I thought it was rather bizarre to start the show with Colin Farrell making the case for same-sex marriage. He was obviously sincere, but ‘Hollywood star favours gay marriage’ sounds more like a…
Highs and lows in dramatic offerings
Having lost some of its programmes to UTV Ireland, TV3 had to fight back with some stronger programming and the twice-weekly drama Red Rock was flagged as its foray into original soaps. Describing it as a soap actually does it something of an injustice, as it’s better than that. The atmospheric visuals immediately put it…
A shocking week with selective outrage
It was a shocking week, with the awful murders in France dominating the media landscape. But what upset me the most was a report on last Sunday’s Nine News on RTÉ 1 that children as young as 10 were being used as suicide bombers by the terrorist group Boku Haram in Nigeria. Now there’s a…