One particular commitment in the election manifesto published on Tuesday by Sinn Féin has given rise to considerable and justified criticism.
Among the party’s policy positions on public service media is a promise to establish an “independent human rights and journalist expert review into the objectivity of coverage by RTÉ of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and other international conflicts”.
It is not clear why exactly Sinn Féin believes such a review is required. It doesn’t appear to know itself. In the four days since the manifesto was published, the party has failed to provide a rationale. But one must assume it believes there are legitimate concerns over the editorial standards which have been applied to coverage of Gaza and other conflicts by the RTÉ newsroom. The fact that Mary Lou McDonald has been unable to explain what these concerns are and has sought instead to conflate the issue with entirely separate questions of RTÉ's governance merely adds weight to the charge that a Sinn Féin-led government would seek to exert inappropriate influence over journalism at the national broadcaster. And if it can do so over Gaza, it presumably believes it can do the same over coverage of domestic issues.
That would be an outrageous breach of fundamental principles. It is true that tensions between successive governments and Montrose have been a feature of modern Irish history, but no mainstream party in recent decades has proposed such a crude and clumsy intervention.
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McDonald’s claim that such a review would be independent is risible, as it would be the product of a political commitment made during an election campaign, bypassing all existing regulatory guardrails and undermining the authority of the recently established Coimisiún na Meán.
The most benign view is that Sinn Féin doesn’t understand what press freedom means. Because the alternative – that it does not believe in the principle – would be far worse. Either way, the commitment should be withdrawn from the manifesto.