In Ireland, the first day of February is the feast day of St Bridget, and it is traditionally regarded as the first day of Spring. For the day that’s in it, here’s an image of St Bridget’s Cross:

According to the font of all wisdom and knowledge, Wikipedia, on this day in

• 1552 – Edward Coke, English jurist and Member of Parliament, was born (d. 1634).
• 1709 – Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being shipwrecked on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
• 1790 – In New York City, the Supreme Court of the United States convenes for the first time.
• 1851 – Mary Shelley, English author, died (b. 1797)
• 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, though it was was not ratified by the states until later; as a consequence, today is National Freedom Day in the United States.
• 1884 – The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
• 1904 – S. J. Perelman, American humorist, was born (d. 1979)
• 1976 – Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1901) and George Whipple, American scientist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1878) both died.
• 1996 – The Communications Decency Act is passed by the U.S. Congress.
• 2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in the death of all seven crew members.

During the course of the next month or so, we are going to hear a lot about the duty of broadcasters to be balanced, fair, objective, and impartial, in current affairs matters. In fact, TV3 have twice now sought to determine exactly what that duty means. First, earlier this month, TV3 queried whether this duty requires a moratorium on political coverage the day prior to polling and on election day. Then, last Thursday night, on Tonight with Vincent Browne, Browne suggested that if Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny did not accept TV3’s invitation to participate in an election debate with other party leaders, TV3 would go ahead with the debate with an empty chair where Kenny should have been; and Browne simply rebuffed Fine Gael’s Alan Shatter’s objection that the empty chair would breach TV3’s duty of impartiality. Given how supine Irish broadcasters have been in the past about the scope and limitations of this duty, I’m delighted to see TV3 take such a robust interpretation, and I look forward to further examples during the general election. In the meantime, in this post, I want to look at the fairness issues raised by the moratorium; in a future post I will look at those raised by the empty chair.

The duty of impartiality at issue in these cases flows from section 39(1) of the Broadcasting Act, 2009 (also here), which requires that broadcasters ensure that

(a) all news broadcast by the broadcaster is reported and presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views,

(b) the broadcast treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current public debate, is fair to all interests concerned and that the broadcast matter is presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of his or her own views, except that should it prove impracticable in relation to a single broadcast to apply this paragraph, two or more related broadcasts may be considered as a whole, if the broadcasts are transmitted within a reasonable period of each other, …

Moreover, section 42(2) of the Act (also here) requires that the BAI prepare a broadcasting code providing

(a) that all news broadcast by a broadcaster is reported and presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views,

(b) that the broadcast treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current public debate, is fair to all interests concerned and that the broadcast matter is presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of the broadcaster’s own views, …

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), reflecting the practice of its predecessor bodies, had taken the view that proper compliance with section 39 requires a moratorium on election coverage by the broadcast media during the final 24 hours before polling commences or while polling is underway, to allow voters a period for reflection in the final stages of an election campaign. Read the rest of this entry »