Hi James

Thanks for your stimulating article, and I want to post a quick response.

I can agree that there is something of a disjuncture between, on the one hand, what many media support organisations working in new democracies and developing countries believe is required to create the conditions of a “free media” – basically freedom from government control – and, on the other, what would really be required to bring into being the kind of media that they are hoping will emerge, media that creates an informed citizenry, is not afraid to stand up to vested interests of all kinds, and that can create the basis for respectful society-wide dialogue and understanding.

There is a genuine naivety, and maybe a little disingenuousness, in imagining that if governments would only keep their hands off the media, the public interest would best be served.

But the Fairness Doctrine (or ‘fairness and balance’ as it is known in Europe) is but one of a diverse set of tools that can be used to create a media environment conducive to securing the public interest. It is more useful in some cases than others, and can be applied judiciously, or across the board. So it is not entirely right to characterise the situation as: “So much has changed since 1987 and there are many problems now with concepts such as a Fairness Doctrine.”

The imposition of fairness and balance by regulation is most relevant where a single or small number of media/broadcasters have a dominant position in terms of where most people get their news and current affairs, and of course where it is practicable to enforce. The purpose of it is not to limit diversity of views. Quite the opposite: it is to ensure that vested interests cannot introduce systematic bias into such dominant media.

The predominantly privately owned media in the US clearly run such a risk of bias (as was proven once Fairness was dropped), in terms of news and current affairs that favour private corporate interests (as characterised by the Murdoch owned media, amongst others), but also in terms of a focus on maximising profits, for instance through advertising revenue and cost-cutting that in turn tends towards sensationalism, ‘infotainment’ and a focus on middle class interests.

Despite the growth in new media forms, from the internet to mobile phones to community media, broadcasting in many countries remains the single most important source of news and current affairs and is very often dominated by a small number of corporations. There is thus a continuing case for ‘fairness and balance’ regulation.

But it should be in conjunction with other forms of regulation that to some extent should render it redundant by blunting the tendency to bias – limits to concentration of ownership, encouragement of diversity of ownership, support for public service media, and so forth. As Chair of Dublin Community Television (www.dctv.ie) I am the first to argue for selective implementation of fairness and balance: we regularly make the case to the Irish regulator that community media introduces a degree of fairness and balance to the sector as a whole which we perceive as having a bias towards mainstream and establishment views. ‘Balance’ always implies some supposed central position, and the question is who defines this!

You are right that we need to look for new ways to regulate and support media – regulation that aims to actually liberate media from vested interests in a structural manner rather than constrain media against its own venal tendencies! The dynamic energy of commercial FM radio is so many African countries may, in the absence of such structural regulation, gradually concentrate into a few commercially driven radio networks, as has happened in so many countries including my own, Ireland, thereby blunting the original edge. Such ‘structural’ legislation and regulatory support for media would aim to serve the public and community interests through creating an environment to a great extent liberated from the tyranny of advertising, and with roots deep enough in people’s lives to withstand the pressures to commercialise.

Seán Ó Siochrú sean@nexus.ie