NIALL MEEHAN,
Madam, - The decision to sanction an increase in RTE's licence fee will be welcomed by all who support pluralism and the survival of an indigenous broadcasting production sector.
You have rightly pointed out that broadcasting in public ownership should be free from government control (Editorial, November 28th). Broadcasting should service the public's need for information, entertainment and culture, not that of the public authority (or of any powerful private interest).
There is an impediment to achieving that freedom from control. That is the requirement to request individual licence fee increases from the Minister for Communications. It is difficult for governments to take an independent view of the needs of independent broadcasters. Governments have a natural tendency to attempt to control information and, if they can, those who disseminate it. A broadcaster that is impoverished and beholden to governments for sanctioning increases in income is potentially a dependent broadcaster, not an independent one.
The public debate begun by the last Minister on the future of broadcasting is an implicit sign of the difficulties governments have in taking unilateral decisions in this area.
No government likes to be seen to approve what is in effect an increase in taxation. Easy kudos can be gained by preventing the public from paying more. In this respect, RTÉ has been left hanging in the wind more than once. The solution is possibly twofold:
1. Index-link a series of licence fee increases to inflation, and to agreed, realisable, performance targets over a number of years. This will enable long-term planning.
2. In the long term, put the decision on applications for licence fee increases in the hands of an independent commission. In other words, put funding on the same arms'-length basis as the running of RTÉ itself.
To support public service broadcasting is not necessarily to support RTÉ in all things. In addition the problems posed by public regulation of media are not exclusive to RTÉ, merely because it is in public hands. By and large, information is a public good in private hands. Freedom of speech is not necessarily the same thing as freedom of the press and the conflicts that can potentially arise require public exploration.
There have been occasions when RTÉ has not fulfilled its responsibilities to the public, but these have generally been a result of the exercise of too much State control. RTÉ management tends not to be objective about its own performance and its failures. However, this is a problem common to all media - a failure to be as open and transparent as the media themselves demand of other large and powerful institutions. Media organisations, both public and private, are generally closed to public scrutiny and there is an inbuilt inhibition on media organisations investigating each other.
The inexorable advance of the digital age should make us attempt to reformulate some of the problems of media regulation. The regulation of RTÉ is a big problem, but the regulation of media is a bigger one.- Yours, etc.,
NIALL MEEHAN,
Faculty Head,
Journalism and Media,
Griffith College,
Dublin 8.