Una Mullaly has an issue with media balance. Her piece in this week’s The Irish Times is a reaction to the recent Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s (BAI) decision to uphold a complaint made against RTE’s The Ray D’Arcy show.
The complaint alleged bias against an item on the show that dealt with the law of abortion. Because the item was indeed biased, and because both the Broadcasting Act and the BAI’s own Code on the matter prohibit such bias, the BAI upheld the complaint.
The BAI discharged its statutory obligations, which is important because an impartial media is central to the integrity of public discourse, itself a core component of a well-functioning democracy.
But Mullally doesn’t see it this way. Her argument is frankly bizarre. “The impact of such rulings”, she says, is that “open and honest debate is stymied”. So rulings in favour of balanced debate stymy open and honest debate. Balanced debate stymies open and honest debate. Balance stymies debate. “Debate” must be imbalanced. There must be no debate.
In Mullally’s view, requiring that abortion advocacy be balanced by alternative viewpoints is a form of “censorship”. Balanced debate is censorship. Balance is censorious. There must be no balance.
She claims that censorious balance prevents the abortion experiences of women from being heard in the public forum. Emphatically not true. Broadcasters are perfectly free to give a platform to women to share their personal experiences of abortion.
What they are not permitted to do is to provide a platform to only one particular perspective on abortion, or to allow the platform be used to promote unchallenged only one political view on abortion. In other words, broadcasters are not permitted to act as pro-choice (or pro-life) lobbyists. Which seems eminently sensible because if they were so permitted they would effectively be censoring the other side of the argument. And that really would be censorship.
Rarely are broadcasts of abortion experiences purely personal in nature. The BAI decision decried by Mullaly related to an item where a couple not only shared their experience of abortion, which is one thing, but repeatedly used the platform afforded them to argue for constitutional change on the issue (namely revoking the right to life of unborn children). They weren’t challenged by the presenter, the same presenter whom the BAI recently found to have used an item on his show to advocate for legal abortion.
Would Mullally think that public discourse is being well served by a presenter if he only ever invited on to his show to discuss abortion women who regret their abortions, and he permitted these women to argue for the rights of the unborn without in any real way challenging their advocacy? I doubt it. She would surely recognize in such a case that there was no real debate taking place, that the “debate” was not remotely open and honest, and that the presenter was effectively censoring the other side of the argument. And if the presenter in question was acting in his capacity as an employee of the State, she would be well within her rights to query the propriety of this dimension to the bias too.
Towards the end of her piece Mullally offers,
“The BAI needs to immediately clarify its regulations again on discussing the topic of abortion on Irish airwaves. No referendum related to any aspect of abortion has been called, yet once again, the BAI is making rulings that are similar to those made during a referendum campaign.”
The BAI’s regulations are already clear enough. They are spelled out at length in its Code on Fairness, Impartiality and Objectivity in News and Current Affairs. This Code applies regardless of whether a referendum campaign is in effect. This too is spelled out by the BAI in various of its publications.
Either debate is balanced or it’s not debate, it’s something else, like propaganda or censorship.
