As the news media cranks into gear for Election 2011, one broadcaster has launched a broadside against Ireland’s stringent broadcast regulations, claiming they violate the human right to freedom of speech.

Thought the days of state censorship were gone? Think again. For 48 hours this March, you’ll hear almost nothing about Irish politics on Irish TV and radio. Ironically, those will be the two days when politics is actually at the top of the public agenda – election time.
The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) enforces a strict ban on “electioneering and/or reference to election issues and/or references by any on-air personnel to the merits or otherwise of election candidates and their policies” in the 24 hours before the general election, and on the day of the poll.
However, the BAI last month announced a “period of consultation” on the policy, now in its fifteenth year. TV3 has taken the opportunity to go on the offensive, arguing that the legality of the ban is “questionable”, and its rationale “archaic” in the era of 24/7 news.
“It’s a very blunt instrument and tantamount to state censorship. It denies audiences the right to up-to-date information about the election,” insists Andrew Hanlon, who is Head of News at the station. “There is such a thing as freedom of speech and the European Convention on Human Rights and even Bunreacht na hÉireann [the Constitution] enshrine that.”
Of course, ‘foreign’ media don’t come under the remit of either Bunreacht na hÉireann or the BAI, so they can report from Ireland whenever they want about whatever they want. Unsurprisingly, TV3 finds this infuriating.
“The lunacy of the moratorium is that other broadcasters and other media, the likes of Sky News or ITV or Channel 4, will all still be here covering the election,” says Hanlon. “CNN, Bloomberg – they’ll be broadcasting live to their respective services, but they are all very easily available to Irish viewers through Sky or UPC.”
So is Hanlon worried about leaving the news agenda open to non-Irish stations which might pick up audience as a result? “It isn’t to do with competition,” he says. “To be honest, when you look at the viewing numbers to those channels, they’re relatively small. Sky News has a tiny viewership, something like one percent. The market share of TV3 is 13 percent and RTÉ One is 21 percent. So it really isn’t to do with a competitive position. We just feel we have the right to give our audiences coverage of the election,” he insists.
So why is the ban there in the first place? In their recently published draft regulations, the BAI put forward two reasons. First, they say the ban ensures “fairness, objectivity and impartiality are achieved… during this critical period in the polling process.” Secondly, it gives voters a “period of reflection in the final stages of the election process.”
The thing is, most people are mentally capable of watching the news and reflecting at the same time. You might argue that a 48-hour ban on broadcasting politicians’ bullshit brings some rather pleasant peace and quiet to the airwaves, but in truth it’s an insult to the public’s intelligence. It assumes the average TV viewer is a pathologically suggestible, nappy-wearing idiot who believes everything they hear said by the tiny people who live inside the TV. In reality, almost no-one is going to skip out to the polling station and vote for the last politician they saw on the news, just because he was the last politician they saw on news.
Over a decade ago, the Canadian Supreme Court argued as much when they struck out a similar election-time prohibition on broadcasting poll results. The court ruled that the Canadian government “cannot take the most uninformed and naïve voter as the standard by which constitutionality is assessed.”
TV3 have quoted that judgement in their submission to the BAI, as they call for the Irish restrictions to be lifted. It remains to be seen whether the powers that be are convinced that voters can actually think for themselves.