There have been two developments today. First, I discovered that not only is there to be a debate between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny on Thursday night, there is also to be one among the leaders of the next four parties on Wednesday. From RTÉ’s website:

The RTÉ television debate among leaders of the smaller parties has been announced.

Labour, the Greens, the Progressive Democrats and Sinn Féin will debate their issues on RTÉ One at 9:30pm on 16 May.

Just in case it wasn’t clear, the logic of making the coverage of the Prime Time debate between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny on Thursday available to be shared and reused online applies equally to this debate on Wednesday. As a consequence, I emailed RTÉ making it clear that my request extended to both debates, and I wrote to the leaders of these parties (pdf here), asking for their support for this initiative.

Second, in a formal response from RTÉ to my initiative, early this afternon, Peter Feeney emailed me as follows:

Further to your request that RTÉ waives its copyright to the debates between the party leaders due to take place on Wednesday and Thursday RTÉ has decided not to agree to your request.

Read More »

Over the last few weeks, I have been tracking the fate of a call on Larry Lessig’s blog for the US political parties and television networks to eliminate unnecessary regulation of political speech by allowing unfettered online access to the recording of the parties’ debates among presidential candidates. First, Barak Obama came on board, next John Edwards and then Chris Dodd. Then CNN announced that it would make presidential debate footage available without restrictions (though Fox News has announced that it will not).

Following yesterday’s RTE.ie web debate comes the news that there will be a television debate between Fianna Fail leader Bertie Ahern and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny on Prime Time on 17 May next. …

Read More »