A tough ask to reach a balanced view of impartiality

MEDIA & MARKETING:The pursuit of 'balance' has been blamed for dubious media treatment of topics such as global warming, where the small proportion of sceptics ... have been granted undue media attention

‘WHAT’S YOUR view on objectivity” will sound like a trick question to current affairs broadcasters. Some, indeed many, may feel that complete objectivity is unattainable, given that every broadcaster’s definition of objectivity will, in itself, be biased. But that’s just their opinion.

Any discussion among broadcasters of objectivity and impartiality falls into a paradoxical realm – a logic vortex in which ardent supporters of the objectivity and impartiality principle are forced to abandon that principle in order to argue their case. And as for those who express their desire to ditch a tradition that dates back to 1920s Britain – well, they would say that.

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s draft code of fairness, objectivity and impartiality – open to public consultation until March 14th – states that news and current affairs must be presented “in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views”.

Happily, broadcasters can still grill guests to the point that their hair singes, their ties curl up and their ear wax blackens and crumbles into tiny fragments if that’s what it takes to achieve fairness, objectivity and impartiality. “Authored” items are also “not inappropriate”, the BAI double-negatives.

There is an exception to the “keep your views to yourself” law: Rule number 30 of the 32-point draft code notes that “a broadcaster may express his or her own views in relation to broadcasting policy matters”, subject to the obligation that the programme or item is objective and impartial overall.

So, to take a recent discussion of the draft code on Tonight With Vincent Browne, it was entirely within the terms of the code for Browne to reject the BAI's aims on the grounds that "neutrality is impossible" given his producers had installed former minister for communications Eamon Ryan on the panel. Ryan's counter-argument was that even if objectivity and impartiality is impossible, "we should strive for it" and that the BAI's code amounts to a "quality control check" that's good for democracy.

But is it good for democracy? The historical basis for impartiality law in broadcasting, as opposed to the press, is that in ye olden days there was just one lonely but all-powerful public service broadcaster to serve the entire audience. The case for applying the law to all commercial players is less clear cut and may actually stifle views “not part of the established mainstream”, as a 2007 discussion document by British broadcasting regulator Ofcom observed. Such an “unintended consequence” of impartiality “arises because news broadcasters may feel compelled to offer a traditional ‘both-sides-of-the-argument’ approach, to the exclusion of more diverse voices”.

The pursuit of “balance” has indeed been blamed for dubious media treatment of topics such as global warming, where the small proportion of sceptics in the scientific community unconvinced that human activity is to blame have been granted undue media attention. If you’re an environmental protester invited on a radio show to discuss the construction of a runway, you might reasonably expect that your “opposite” number will be someone who argues that the likely economic boost outweighs the environmental impact, not an outright climate change denier. That would skew the debate.

Ofcom boiled the issue down to a balance between engagement and trust – strict adherence to impartiality risks disengaging the audience, it argued, but abandoning the principle is potentially catastrophic for the audience’s ability to trust the news.

Admitting that there was “little clamour” for any change, Ofcom soon retreated from its musings on impartiality’s downside. More recently, the debate in Britain has been framed as a question of Sky News wanting the same freedoms as its Republican-loving US cousin Fox News. But there is some haziness about whether abandoning political impartiality – or a veneer thereof – would be in Sky’s commercial interest anyway.

For me, the winning hand boils down to two words that strike fear into my subjective heart: “shock jock”. Their very “-ck” sound conjures up the bellowing tones of male broadcasters convinced that being interesting and being crass are one and the same.

That's my bias. I've seen those clips of Fox presenters' furrowed brows on BBC4's Newswipe– closely cropped to maximise the grotesque nature of the views they represent – and can't help thinking that even an imperfect system of only superficial fairness, patchy impartiality and hypocritical nods towards objectivity is preferable to the reactionary shoutiness established and propagated by dinosaurs of the Reagan era.

That’s not to say that such an outcome would be the inevitable result of a more relaxed regulatory approach, or that the BAI’s draft code hasn’t got the potential to both intensify day-to-day difficulties for working journalists and encourage vexatious complaints. There is another referendum on the way and it will be as much a test of the BAI as it is of the broadcasters themselves.