{"id":298288,"date":"2026-02-14T20:25:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T20:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/298288\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T20:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T20:25:12","slug":"its-a-real-void-not-going-but-the-madness-has-to-stop-marty-whelan-on-rtes-eurovision-boycott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/298288\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s a real void, not going, but the madness has to stop\u2019 \u2013 Marty Whelan on RT\u00c9\u2019s Eurovision boycott"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Broadcaster has \u2018no qualms\u2019 about staying away over Israel taking part\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Marty Whelan says he's proud of his growing listenership at Lyric FM. Photo: Steve Humphreys\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/59b5e9a2-77f8-4b3f-a3be-a49d27a78878.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Marty Whelan says he&#8217;s proud of his growing listenership at Lyric FM. Photo: Steve Humphreys<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">RT\u00c9\u2019s Marty Whelan has expressed regret that he will not be commentating from this year\u2019s Eurovision contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It follows RT\u00c9\u2019s decision not to take part, deeming it \u201cunconscionable\u201d given the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Broadcaster has \u2018no qualms\u2019 about staying away over Israel taking part Marty Whelan says he&#8217;s proud of his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,17948,97,61,60,3410,101340,34252,6085,1859],"class_list":{"0":"post-298288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eurovision","10":"tag-gaza","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-marty-whelan","15":"tag-melanie-finn","16":"tag-rte","17":"tag-sweden"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}