RTÉ HAS brought a High Court challenge to a decision of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC) that the station infringed its own taste and decency regulations by using a graphic of a Bible and rosary beads in a television news broadcast about the Ferns report into clerical child sexual abuse.
RTÉ has asked the High Court to overturn the BCC's decision to uphold a complaint by a member of the public about the graphic, screened on October 25th, 2005.
The complainant, John Whelan, Edenbrook Park, Rathfarnham, had claimed the use of these images in the montage background to the news item amounted to a "profane use of sacramentals".
In the proceedings before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, RTÉ is seeking to overturn the commission's decision of December 2005 which upheld the complaint by Mr Whelan.
The BCC held the use of the montage was inappropriate, likely to cause offence and infringed guidelines on taste and decency.
Paul O'Higgins SC, for RTÉ, said it was a slightly unusual case with something of the flavour of the 1950s about it.
RTÉ was contending that the finding was irrational and unreasonable, Mr O'Higgins said. RTÉ believed it had not behaved unfairly but rather acted entirely appropriately in using the images as something had to be used with which the viewers could identify.
RTÉ argued that the BCC had acted either with no jurisdiction or in excess of its jurisdiction.
Section 19 of the Broadcasting Act 2001 provided that the commission should specify a code of standards to be complied with relating to the taste and decency of programme material.
However, to date the BCC had not prepared such a code and it therefore had no jurisdiction to adjudicate upon complaints regarding alleged want of taste or decency in broadcast material.
RTÉ also argued that the commission acted without jurisdiction in assuming the complaint related to questions of taste and decency when, in reality, the complaint alleged offensiveness to religious beliefs.