Sir, - Thank you to Eddie Holt for so strongly supporting public service television after RTE's loss of the hugely popular Coronation Street. I agree that every democracy needs a well-funded, publicly-owned but independent and accountable national broadcaster.
But I must take issue when he writes that during the operation of Section 31 orders banning interviews with Sinn Fein and others, "many journalists and producers within RTE not only complied with, but vigorously supported the censorship".
I was chairman of the National Union of Journalists branch in RTE during some of that time, and I can tell him that majorities of the membership repeatedly voted to condemn censorship (while also condemning political violence). It's true that some journalists and producers argued that the censorship was justified - but I wouldn't call them many. Another small minority argued that we should not "comply with" the ministerial orders, but most of us took the view that public service broadcasters have no right to choose which laws they obey.
Looking back at the NUJ campaign against broadcasting censorship, the discouraging thing was the lack of active public support we got. It will be a tragedy if a similar failure now to speak up for proper funding of RTE allows nervous governments to cause non-commercial broadcasting to wither away. - Yours, etc.,
Patrick Kinsella, School of Communications, Dublin City University, Dublin 9.