BCCI's dodgy Dunphy decision

It is strange that the recent upholding by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of Ireland (BCCI) of a complaint against the former NewsTalk 106 presenter Eamon Dunphy has not been jumped upon by those who oppose the setting up of a press council. If ever there was a good argument against such a body, it is to be found in the skewed and dangerous logic of this finding.

The complaint related to an interview with Liam Doran of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) on Breakfast with Eamon Dunphy last January. The subject was work practices among theatre nurses at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital. The complaint was made by Mr M Walsh, an official of the local Health Service Executive (HSE). The commission upheld the complainant's submission that the interview had been unfair and that the HSE had not been afforded an adequate opportunity to respond. Actually, the breakfast show researchers had, the previous day, made assiduous efforts to persuade the HSE to field a spokesperson to debate with Mr Doran. When this request was refused, it was reluctantly decided that the matter would be dealt with in two separate interviews, one with Mr Doran and the other with a HSE spokesman. Due to a late-breaking story, however, the time available for the item became restricted, and it was decided that the story could be adequately covered in a single interview. Since Mr Doran has been the first to agree to an interview, and had imposed no conditions, it was decided to interview him.

The BCCI acknowledged that Eamon Dunphy had informed listeners that the HSE had refused to take part in a live debate. He did so in characteristic style. "I think the public will have got the picture here," he said. "It's a propaganda war as far as they are concerned and which they're not even prepared to engage in debate and they ain't getting away with this anymore on this programme."

The BCCI stated that the HSE had a "right" to have a policy of declining to participate in live discussions and should have been afforded "another" means of response. This amounts to an extraordinary perspective on the nature of debate in a democratic society. It is utterly farcical that the BCCI appears here to have treated the HSE as some kind of tearful victim of bullying by Eamon Dunphy. Balance is an important journalistic principle, but the requirements of that principle were met on this occasion by repeated invitations to the HSE to participate in the debate. The HSE is a state-run department which, in addition to its enormous responsibilities to citizens and taxpayers, is endowed with frightening powers in relation to, for example, intervention in family life. A few days after the interview which attracted the disfavour of the BCCI, I was myself interviewed by Eamon Dunphy about a column of mine in the Irish Times concerning an intervention by the HSE which resulted in a man being barred from his home and his children taken into care. In all the Irish media, Dunphy was the only broadcaster willing to pursue this matter. When asked to provide a spokesperson to debate this issue, the HSE again refused – on the risible grounds that it did not wish to cause distress to the family concerned. Tellingly, it also refused to debate the general principles concerning its interventions in family life. This places the BCCI decision in a more worrying perspective. It is already disgraceful that, nothwithstanding its enormous powers and responsibilities, the HSE appears to believe it has a "right" to have a "policy" of refusing to debate its activities in public. But it is utterly dismaying that the BCCI has been prepared to vindicate that "right", extending a licensed unaccountability to the HSE and other state bodies. This finding therefore raises serious questions about the capacity of the BCCI to serve the interests of democratic debate and would seem to vindicate those who suggest that such bodies are inimical to press freedom.