Sir, – Hugh Linehan's perceptive column of the issue of fair broadcasting ("Did RTÉ fail the balance test by broadcasting The 8th?", August 14th) makes a refreshing change from some facile criticism of the statutory requirement during recent referendums.
One generally finds that those people, liberal or conservative, left or right, complaining about the need for balanced broadcasting, are complaining that people on the other side are getting too much exposure for their views.
When the fairness doctrine fell in the United States, it was as a result of lobbying by corporate interest and the right.
The result is dismal, with not just the excesses of Fox News evident, but an overall difficulty in finding sources of broadcast news and current affairs that are not grandstanding one side or the other.
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During the abortion and marriage equality debates in Ireland, it was the liberals who complained most loudly. Clearly their arguments were the only reasonable ones, and those who disagreed were getting too much airtime.
As it happened, Irish people turned out to be able to hear both sides of the case fairly presented and still make the decision the liberals wanted – not that we heard that fact much acknowledged later. The provisions for fairness in Ireland and Britain are nuanced, and have never required dreary tit-for-tat coverage. Any such coverage is a failure of production.
Hugh Linehan rightly points up the problem of an increasing flow of documentaries on on-demand or online services that range from somewhat biased to wildly unreliable and hagiographic (and sponsored by vested interests in some cases).
This is part of a broader problem with various online services that requires more international regulation and not less, and much greater pressure on multinational media and social media companies to up their game by providing effective recourse for untruths.
Where there is a will, there is a way to do these things. People will always need to be able to trust the sources of information.
Fairness in mass media goes to the heart of democracy. – Yours, etc,
COLUM KENNY,
Professor Emeritus,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.