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On 29 July 2015, the Court of Appeal ordered the airline company Ryanair to disclose its fuel policy between 2010 and 2012 to the broadcaster Channel Four Television Corporation, in a pre-trial hearing in Ryanair’s defamation proceedings against the broadcaster. The case arose following an August 2013 edition of Channel 4’s investigative programme Dispatches, which “was to the effect Ryanair had endangered passenger safety by operating a low-fuel policy and by pressuring its pilots to take as little fuel as possible”. The airline issued defamation proceedings over the broadcast, and the broadcaster...

The executive complaints forum of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has rejected a complaint against the broadcaster TV3 that a comedian’s joke referring to Jesus was offensive and disrespectful to Christian beliefs. A complaint had been made over the December 2014 broadcast of the comedian Tommy Tiernan’s Crooked Man programme by TV3, when the comedian stated “On St Patrick’s Day, Jesus himself comes out of the desert, ‘mother of fuck… any chance of a pint is there. The Devil is driving me demented. Question after fucking question. Pint of Guinness please Seamus, thanks. What’s that?...

The compliance committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has held that the broadcaster 98FM violated a number of broadcasting rules during a live phone-in programme on the issue of minors sending inappropriate pictures of themselves. A complaint had been made by the mother of a 13-year-old girl over an April 2014 broadcast of 98FM’s phone-in programme Dublin Talks. The complainant claimed that her daughter’s participation in the programme breached the broadcasting act’s rules on harm and offence, and the broadcasting code’s rules on harm and privacy. The Dublin Talks programme featured...

Following the publication of draft media merger guidelines in December 2014 (see IRIS 2015-2/24), the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has now published the final version of the Guidelines on Media Mergers. The guidelines are made under the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014, which significantly reforms the law on media mergers in Ireland, and provides that the communications minister may publish guidelines on the operation of the Act (see IRIS 2015-2/23). The final guidelines “broadly reflect” the draft guidelines, but with a number of significant amendments,...

The compliance committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has held that the public broadcaster RTÉ did not violate broadcasting rules during a programme on the purchase of abortion pills online. A complaint had been made over an October 2014 broadcast of RTÉ’s investigative programme ‘Prime Time’, claiming the programme breached the Broadcasting Code’s rules on fairness and objectivity, and the Broadcasting Act’s prohibition on promoting or inciting crime. The Prime Time programme first featured a pre-recorded report, where a reporter explained how a group had been advertising the...