David QuinnIt’s now in the open, liberals don’t like balanced debate, writes David Quinn
The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland recently found against the Mooney Show on RTÉ. At the beginning of this year, the show ran an item in which presenter Derek Mooney, plus his two guests, all declared themselves to be in favour of same-sex marriage. A complaint was made against the item by the Family and Media Association and the BAI ruled that the item had breached the statutory requirement to be fair, impartial and objective.
With that, a minor firestorm ensued. LGBT groups complained that they could no longer talk about their aspirations in an open and free manner on the air, which was nonsense of course. What they couldn’t do was politicise in an unchallenged way, and calling for a change to the Constitution, which same-sex marriage will entail, is politicising. That should be obvious.
Various commentators joined in the fun including Daragh McManus, radio critic for The Irish Independent who complained about the “spurious” notion of balance on the airwaves. Spurious? (Mind you, I will always be grateful to Daragh for a column he wrote a few years ago in which he criticised some of the people who eff and blind me on Twitter.)
And then the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) got involved. It issued a statement criticising the decision, but worryingly the statement showed that the NUJ doesn’t understand the law under which many of its members operate.
Broadcasters must abide by the Broadcasting Act. This law imposes on broadcasters a requirement to be fair, impartial and objective.
Section 39 of the Act says:
“(1) Every broadcaster shall ensure that—
(a) all news broadcast by the broadcaster is reported and presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views,
(b) the broadcast treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current public debate, is fair to all interests concerned and that the broadcast matter is presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of his or her own views, except that, should it prove impracticable in relation to a single broadcast to apply this paragraph, two or more related broadcasts may be considered as a whole, if the broadcasts are transmitted within a reasonable period of each other.”
This applies across the board and at all times. But the NUJ has got it into its head that it only applies in a referendum, or in the period immediately before a referendum.
It therefore concluded that the ruling against the Mooney Show was mistaken because the marriage referendum is not due until next year and, as a result, “Our members, researchers, producers and presenters are now put in a very difficult position in evaluating stories and, in particular, studio interviews”.
Fair
That “very difficult position” is the requirement to be fair. In other words, the NUJ believes it is unfair to ask broadcasters to be fair.
Professor Colum Kenny, a lecturer in journalism and a member of the BAI, responded to the NUJ in his own capacity. Kenny is a liberal and I would be absolutely amazed if he does not favour same-sex marriage. But he recognised that the NUJ didn’t know what it was talking about.
He reminded the NUJ that the Broadcasting Act applies at all times. The NUJ shouldn’t need to be reminded of this, nor should its members.
What this incident actually makes abundantly clear is that there is growing resistance to the very notion that we ought to hear an alternative to the liberal position on the airwaves anymore.
Liberals now appear to be so convinced of the rightness of their point of view that they have grown tired of hearing any serious challenge to what they believe. Any serious challenge is clearly in error in their opinion and probably a product of bigotry or ignorance, or both, and should not be heard.
This is why alternative voices rarely get an airing on radio anymore. When you think of the hundreds and hundreds of hours of airtime to be filled every week on all the shows across all the radio and television stations, it is actually remarkable how rarely a challenge to the liberal viewpoint is heard, and when it is heard, social media immediately lights up with complaints about the fact that such a challenge is being heard at all.
Most of the time what we hear on the airwaves is an unchallenged liberal point of view so that political correctness has become the absolutely dominant orthodoxy of the day and to challenge it almost automatically places you beyond the pale.
When dissenting voices are heard, it is generally only when a very big story has broken, say another abortion controversy, and then people with the pro-life point of view find themselves on the defensive.
But they are very rarely invited onto shows as, say, a Justine McCarthy or a Fergus Finlay are, to simply comment on the general affairs of the day. Why do we so rarely hear Kevin Myers on air, for instance?
The recent ruling against the Mooney Show put a very small spanner in the liberal works, but no more than that.
In actual fact, the BAI should have more teeth and it should use those teeth more. The very fact that liberalism has hardened into the reigning orthodoxy of the day shows that the requirement to be fair, impartial and objective is being constantly flouted.
Currently if a show is found to be in breach of the broadcasting rules, the show has to read out the ruling on air. This isn’t enough. If a show reoffends, it should be fined.
Our broadcasters are like our bankers. Light touch regulation doesn’t work. We need something more than that. Healthy and free debate depends on it.