An Irish airline illegally transported munitions to Israel – despite just months before taking part in a Microsoft Teams call with Department of Transport officials after reports of its munitions flights to Israel.
After The Ditch reported that ASL had transported munitions to Israel – on a flight requiring authorisation from the transport minister – the Department of Transport contacted the airline.
The department and the airline had a Microsoft Teams call.
The airline soon after carried out another illegal weapons flight to Israel.
Continue reading here - https://www.ontheditch.com/department-of-transport-holds-teams-call/
I don’ t question the facts mentioned in the article. You can deceit people, however, in more subtle ways by various means such as biased article/topic selection. For example, the site has been publishing critical articles about Israel or Irish politics, which is perfectly alright, but they ignore certain other topics.
I never came across this site and don’t know Mr. McNeill or his work so far. But he hasn’t done investigative journalism at the China Daily, this we can tell for sure I guess as everything that is only slightly critical of China is strictly censored there.
If there is an obvious bias in the article selection, it is not an independent media, even if it’s factual reporting. They also don’t disclose the donors list.
What other topics did they ignore? They are mainly a political publication targeting the things that are normally hidden from the greater public in Ireland due to the way that the media is owned and distributed in Ireland. They don’t really print any fluff articles about any politicians because that is done enough in the other publications. They are specifically targeting the news that is purposely being suffocated or silenced in Ireland. He also used to work for the Irish Independent.
The Ditch is probably left/centre-left leaning and the government definitely are (no matter what they claim) - so if it finds criticism in them that we are not otherwise hearing, I am all for it.
All governments should be held to accountabilty imo.
Their factual articles way outweigh any issues that you may have with whoever it is you don’t know may or may not have donated to it.
Initially when they published a story it was a case that the other publications would challenge it. They have found it more effective if they ignore it, as that was causing them to create something similar to the streisand effect. All of those other publications are biased leaning and can still challenge any articles published in it. They don’t, because not only do they not want to bring attention to them, they also know that the ditch is almost always meticulous in their investigating and are factually accurate.
I am not sure if you have any skin in this game, but it certainly seems like it when you are trying to taint credibility about a journalist who did not write the article. The article you can bet is factually correct, your attempts at diluting it’s importance are just that.