Broadcasting Authority (Amendment) Act, 1976

Impartiality.

3.—The Principal Act is hereby amended by the substitution of the following subsections for section 18 (1) :

“(1) Subject to subsection (1A) of this section, it shall be the duty of the Authority to ensure that—

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

(c) any matter, whether written, aural or visual, and which relates to news or current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current public debate, which pursuant to section 16 of this Act is published, distributed or sold by the Authority is presented by it in an objective and impartial manner.

Paragraph (b) of this subsection, in so far as it requires the Authority not to express its own views, shall not apply to any broadcast in so far as the broadcast relates to any proposal, being a proposal concerning policy as regards broadcasting, which is of public controversy or the subject of current public debate and which is being considered by the Government or the Minister.

Should it prove impracticable in a single programme to apply paragraph (b) of this subsection, two or more related broadcasts may be considered as a whole; provided that the broadcasts are transmitted within a reasonable period.

(1A) The Authority is hereby prohibited from including in any of its broadcasts or in any matter referred to in paragraph (c) of subsection (1) of this section anything which may reasonably be regarded as being likely to promote, or incite to, crime or as tending to undermine the authority of the State.

(1B) The Authority shall not, in its programmes and in the means employed to make such programmes, unreasonably encroach on the privacy of an individual.”.