Irish media guilty of anti-Bush bias

AS an Irishman living in the US I am delighted that George W Bush won re-election.

All year long I followed the extremely biased coverage of the US presidential election in the Irish media. RTÉ and the major newspapers, the Irish Examiner included, reported very few positive stories about the president.

Coverage focused on the likes of Michael Moore telling us how Bush lied about the war and was in effect a war criminal, how the war was about oil, which Hollywood star was supporting Kerry, and so on.

RTÉ, for example, jumped on the few polls recently which showed Kerry even or ahead in the race while ignoring the daily plethora of polls which consistently showed Bush ahead.

Fortunately, the heartland of the US is a conservative place where many people strongly believe in the war on terror and the way it is being conducted, where people do not share the secular values of John Kerry and who are disgusted by practices such as partial-birth abortion.

People have not been fooled by the negative stories about the economy. How many European countries would call a 5.4% and falling unemployment rate a problem? This has also been underscored by the Republicans increasing their majorities in both houses of Congress.

What a shock it must have been for all those Michael Moore lovers in Ireland and Europe to wake up on Wednesday morning to a second term for the president, having gone to bed the night before believing those misleading exit polls which indicated a Kerry victory.

Four more years!

John Hopkins

Waltham

Massachusetts

USA