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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
60 July 2021
“not intended to penalise individuals who
unwittingly create small scale On-Demand
Audiovisual Media Services (ODAVMS) where the
risk of harm from such services remains low”.
However, that simply invites the question of
where such a risk threshold lies, and once the
principle of such registration is introduced, it can
be moved by subsequent primary legislation, or
even a statutory instrument. Does it cover major
podcasters, or does the degree of harm make a
dierence? Is a comic book reviewer with 10,000
subscribers more or less of a public menace than
a far-right conspiracy theorist with a tenth that
many followers spreading anti-Semitic hatred or
disinformation about vaccines?
Martin McMahon, known for the Echo Chamber
podcast, the flagship programme produced by
the Tortoise Shack hub, believes the proposals
may be “unpoliceable”. A typical episode of his
podcast attracts an average of 30,000
downloads, an audience many smaller local
radio stations would envy. “It’s a bit of a pig in a
poke really, you don’t know what you’re going to
get or what obligations will be put on you”.
“I’m not adverse to coming under an umbrella”,
McMahon says. “What I am adverse to is coming
under an umbrella which stops us doing what
we’re already doing”.
“Then again”, he adds, “if I do come under an
umbrella, can I have a share of the licence fee
please?”.
Broadcasting Bill from 2019 which had fallen by
the wayside following the 2020 general election.
Theendresult is a clunking behemoth, lunging
through the Oireachtas and towards Áras an
Uachtaráin to be signed.
The bill proposes a new commission, to
replace the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland
(BAI), but with a much broader remit. The BAI
itself has become a Christmas-tree regulator in
the last decade, given roles in everything from
assessing the competition impacts of media
mergers to ruling on how to ensure balanced
coverage of elections and referendum votes. The
new law could compound this, as “audio-visual
services” extend far beyond what RTÉ, TG4 or
Virgin broadcast, and could theoretically
encompass everything from YouTube channels
and podcasts to Instagram and TikTok video
shorts.
An explanatory note in the proposed
legislation does state that while there will be a
“system of registration”, and the power to
prosecute for non-registration, this provision is
A
regular feature of the American
legislative process every year or so,
was that a seemingly innocuous bill,
unlikely to attract too much
opposition no matter who held
power in either the Capitol or the White House,
would begin to attract unrelated amendments.
A small legal provision toapprove funding for
new postage stamp designs would suddenly find
itself enacting a tax cut for oil miners; increased
military spending in aprairiestate where many
of the voters worked for defence contractors;or
subsidies for pumpkin farmers in New England.
Such a bill became known as a ‘Christmas Tree
bill’, as Senators and representatives each
attached their own shiny bauble to it to please
the good folks back home.
In Ireland the Online Safety and Media
Regulation bill shows all the symptoms of being
a Christmas Tree bill. Even the name, welding
together the internet and broadcasting, betrays
its roots as a Frankenstein’s creature, bolted
together from disparate elements. It’s as if
someone in the department decided that the
internet (social media) and broadcasting (news
media) belonged together because they both
had ‘media’ in their names.
The bill — or at least one part of it — began life
as the European Audio-Visual Services Directive.
The last such directive was issued in 2010, when
smartphones were still a recent innovation, and
traditional broadcast services still ruled the
airwaves. Some futurists were predicting that
more people would move away from television
and cinema screens to watch programmes on
their phones, tablets and computer screens, but
the rise of the internet streaming giants, from
Amazon to Netflix and Disney, was still in the
future.
The directive itself is also something of a
christmas tree, covering areas from how many
minutes of advertising are permitted in an hour
or a day; rules on product placement and
sponsorship; the protection of minors; and how
much content must come from European
sources.
In Ireland, the directive was not simply
transposed, but instead the proposed media bill
attracted several domestic amendments on
issues such as cyberbullying, in addition to
integrating measures from a planned
‘Audio-visual services’ extend far beyond what
RTÉ Virgin broadcast, and could encompass
everything from YouTube channels and
podcasts to Instagram and TikTok video shorts.
Umbrella needed not
Christmas Tree
The Online Safety and Media Regulation bill is a
confusing hotchpotch which expands the BAI ‘s
remit, and poses dangers for podcasters
By Gerard Cunningham
MEDIA
At risk: Podcsts
