Cliffhanging themselves

RTE's contradictory reporting on the French election left viewers confused.

Literally right up until the last desperate minute, RTÉ was trying to put an optimistic face on the French referendum. Thus, just as the polls closed on Sunday, the 9pm TV news kicked-off with Anne Doyle telling us it was a "cliffhanger" and that "despite recent opinion polls showing overwhelming support for a No vote, it's now predicted that the final outcome could be decided by a narrower margin".

The unidentified now-predictors apparently had nothing to go on but their own EU-phoria, because a minute later Sean Whelan was bringing accurate news from Paris; the exit polls showed a result at the "overwhelming" end of recent forecasts.

As shows of bias go, it was both stupid and inconsequential; all the RTÉ newswriters had to do was devise a holding headline that promised results-in-a-moment; instead they flashed one that had every chance of being quickly contradicted, as it was. The only effect was to bewilder viewers.

If RTÉ could lead with anonymous predictors, The Irish Times foregrounded the views of anonymous interpreters. Lara Marlowe's page one report on Monday said: "France's No vote was interpreted as a reaction to last year's enlargement of the EU", though no one was cited to back this interpretation, unsupported by polling.

Marlowe also stuck by her longstanding, rather contemptuous view that the "extreme left and extreme right formed a de facto alliance" in the No campaign – when it is clear that broad swathes of the left, despite the Oui-thinking of many socialist leaders, were the No side's backbone, standing aloof from the far-right.

Amusingly, despite this front-page version, deep inside the paper its editorial got it more or less correct: most French voters were convinced that "free market liberalism will be intensified if the constitution is passed, gravely affecting France's model of social protection".

While this explanation still arguably attributes a hint of blinkered chauvinism to the French electorate, it certainly doesn't identify the result with Le Pen racism. That version of the No campaign did, however, get a major pictorial boost with the wire-service photo selected to lead both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent the day before the vote; an elegant French woman gazes between two posters – a lovely Green-Party "Oui" ("To make another Europe possible") and a nasty anti-Turkish National-Front "Non" ("Je garde la France!").

In France, the media's Yes bias has left a bad taste in people's mouths. But just as in Ireland, it was highly predictable; elite opinion in most of Europe, outside Britain, is solidly behind EU integration and neo-liberalism; and journalists (be they in national broadcasters or commercial media) are plugged into elites – even when our low wages make us unlikely mouthpieces for capital.

Meejit has previously written of the Brussels drinking circles that encourage correspondents to "go native" with the eureaucracy. But of course there is a deeper sociology behind the mind-numbing influence of writing from and about Europe. After all, Washington correspondents may also go native, but more often than not, Irish journalists in the US will get a chance to take on the views of vaguely liberal Democrats, and thus pick up some semblance of opposition to Bush policies.

Journalistic professionalism, indeed, dictates as much – and Meejit freely acknowledges that most journalists are honourable pros. But what if the institution you're assigned to cover neither has, nor seems to need, a built-in opposition? That's the EU. In Brussels, policy seems less a matter of politics – the playing out of opposing social forces – than of commonsense, technocratic problem-solving. And who could be against that – except perhaps the "extreme left" and "extreme right"?

Now, however, the media have a crisis to play with. With the pro-Europe "line" suddenly less clear, we may even see some varied and interesting journalism about the future of the EU project.