Search results : 306

The Executive Complaints Forum of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has rejected a complaint against the broadcaster TV3 that a comedian’s comment about the “Eucharist” infringed general community standards and respect for persons and groups in society. A complaint had been made over the March 2016 broadcast of the comedian Tommy Tiernan’s Crooked Man programme by TV3, in which he referred to the “Eucharist” as “that f****** thing”. Under section 48 of the Broadcasting Act 2009, individuals may make a complaint to the Authority that a broadcaster failed to comply with the broadcasting...

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has upheld a complaint regarding a television advertisement co-ordinated by the Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA) as being in breach of Section 41(3) of the Broadcasting Act 2009, which provides that “a broadcaster shall not broadcast an advertisement which is directed towards a political end” (see IRIS 2009-10/18). A similar ban in the UK was found to be consistent with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights in 2013 (see IRIS 2013-6/1). The complaint concerned an advertising campaign entitled “The...

On 16 September 2016, the Compliance Committee of the Broadcasting Authority Ireland (BAI) rejected by a majority two complaints concerning comments made in a live interview about a political party and some of its voters. The complaints concerned an edition of RTÉ’s long-running chat show The Late Late Show, broadcast on 19 February 2016, one week before the Irish parliamentary elections. The show included an interview with a well-known journalist, Paul Williams, on the subject of crime in Dublin, with most of the interview concerning two feuding crime families. However, toward the end of the interview,...

The High Court has ruled on the liability of internet intermediaries for defamatory posts by third parties on their platforms in the case of Muwema v Facebook Ireland Ltd. The plaintiff, Fred Muwema, a Ugandan lawyer, took issue with three allegedly “highly offensive and defamatory publications” posted on a Facebook page in March 2016. The publications were posted by a person identified only by the pseudonym ‘Tom Voltaire Okwalinga’ (“TVO”). Justice Donald Binchy in the High Court granted the order for disclosure of the identity and location of the person(s) operating the impugned page. However,...

On 30 August 2016, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) launched its Media Research Funding Scheme 2016, with funding being made available for research projects on themes of relevance to the broadcasting sector and the BAI. The Scheme is set out in a 19-page document, which identifies a number of areas of interest: first, gender in the media, including identifying the research gaps in gender in radio and television in Ireland; identifying gender performance indicators or broadcasters; and other relevant gender topics. Second, broadcast media and society, including the extent to which the...