Sir, – Attempts to represent recent Broadcasting Compliance Committee rulings on two radio discussions about the same-sex marriage referendum as somehow unclear are misleading.
If broadcaster Will Faulkner is correct that there is some anxiety about these decisions among broadcasters (“Lack of clarity on broadcast treatment of same-sex marriage debate”, Opinion & Analysis, December 19th), then they ought to relax.
The law is simple and not new. It requires every broadcaster to ensure that “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”.
Some broadcasters have been campaigning for years to change the law. The National Union of Journalists and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties should think twice before lending their weight to that campaign. The law protects the people whom they represent.
A combination of broadcasters who wanted to make more emotive programmes, and big business that correctly anticipated deregulated broadcasting as being more favourable to its interests, campaigned successfully to have the US abandon its “fairness doctrine”. Fox News is one outcome. Shock-jocks another.
The Broadcasting Compliance Committee, of which I am a member, applies a legal requirement that is more than 50 years old in both Ireland and Britain.
It means, for example, that a general election debate will not consist entirely of Fine Gael supporters.
Una Mullally (“Who does the BAI ruling on marriage equality serve?”, Opinion & Analysis, December 8th) thinks it “unfair” for a gay journalist to have to sit in a studio with someone who opposes gay marriage. On the contrary, when the forthcoming referendum is being discussed it would be unfair if opponents of gay marriage were given unopposed access to the airwaves.
The decisions of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, all available online, show that we have not "zoomed in on" the gay marriage referendum, as Una claims. A small proportion of all complaints from the public relate to it, and most of those have been rejected (no doubt because most professional broadcasters are well aware of what is required).
Down the years all political parties have reasserted their support for fairness in broadcasting. The alternative is, presumably, unfairness. – Yours, etc,
Prof COLUM KENNY,
School of Communications,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.