This thesis investigates how Radio Telelis Eireann (RTE) constructs television stories about poverty. Using a combination of critical content analysis and an ethnography of the production context of television programmes, the study examines poverty stories on factual, fictional and fund-raising television. The study begins with an account of how existing social science discourse has considered the phenomenon of poverty in the Republic of Ireland. It proceeds to examine the limited amount of debate about media coverage of poverty. The case for a largely qualitative methodological approach is then outlined. The main part of the study is an analysis of how poverty stories are constructed on RTE’s Six-One News, Tuesday File, Glenroe and the People in Need Telethon. Each of these four chapters consider the respective programmes in terms of their history, production context, the content of their poverty coverage, as well as a consideration of the ideology of that coverage. The study adopts Thompson’s (1990) definition of ideology which is concerned with how asymmetrical relations of power and domination are established and sustained in contemporary capitalist societies. The final chapter argues that poverty coverage on RTE television is not only reductive, but also serves to render invisible, significant proportions of the population who are poor. The chapter suggests that Golding and Middleton’s (1982) dichotomy of God’s and the Devil’s poor be recast, to take account of the central role which television coverage offers the agents of the poor. RTE television’s coverage of poverty is shown to reproduce the liberalism which predominates in Irish society. The study concludes with a consideration of the theoretical and policy implications of the project’s main research findings.