{"id":271709,"date":"2026-01-07T06:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T06:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/271709\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T06:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T06:35:17","slug":"if-rte-feels-it-is-under-pressure-then-it-should-look-at-what-is-happening-across-europe-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/271709\/","title":{"rendered":"If RT\u00c9 feels it is under pressure then it should look at what is happening across Europe \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first transmission by 2RN, the modest radio service that would evolve into Radio \u00c9ireann and later RT\u00c9<\/a>, went out on January 1st, 1926. <\/p>\n

One hundred years on, RT\u00c9 director general Kevin Bakhurst<\/a> has promised what looks like a rather low-key programme of commemorative events, intended to revisit Irish broadcasting landmarks and to address what he calls \u201chow RT\u00c9 will deliver to audiences in the future\u201d. <\/p>\n

In the process, it should not be afraid to ask an unsettling question: can public service broadcasting survive at all?<\/p>\n

This is not an argument for the immediate abolition of RT\u00c9 nor even necessarily for its radical dismantling.<\/p>\n

It is simply the need for an acknowledgment that the rationale underpinning public service media is being challenged more fundamentally than at any point in its history. <\/p>\n

Importantly, this is not an Irish peculiarity. Indeed, despite its recent scandals and continuing financial pressures, RT\u00c9 appears, for now, to be in a more stable position than many of its European peers.<\/p>\n

In France<\/a>, public broadcasting has become a frontline issue as political tensions rise in advance of next year\u2019s presidential election. <\/p>\n

France T\u00e9l\u00e9visions and Radio France are the subject of a high-profile parliamentary inquiry into editorial neutrality, governance and financing. Critics on the right allege a persistent left-leaning bias in news and current affairs, while defenders argue that the inquiry is politically motivated and designed to intimidate journalists. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Trust will \u2018take some time to rebuild\u2019, says Kevin Bakhurst, as RT\u00c9 misses key targetOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The dispute has intensified anxieties about editorial independence at a moment of deep political polarisation.<\/p>\n

Alongside this, a long-mooted plan to reorganise France\u2019s public media under a single holding structure has repeatedly stalled, provoking industrial action and parliamentary resistance. <\/p>\n

The financing model remains equally contested. President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s<\/a> decision to abolish the television licence fee in 2022 and replace it with funding from general taxation was framed as necessary modernisation, but has instead left broadcasters vulnerable to future political bargaining. <\/p>\n

That settlement is now under review, reopening fundamental questions about independence and security.<\/p>\n

French public broadcasters have also taken the unusual step of launching legal action against private right-wing outlets, accusing them of orchestrating smear campaigns designed to undermine trust in public media. <\/p>\n

The escalation underlines the extent to which public broadcasting has become entangled in wider cultural and ideological conflict, rather than standing above it.<\/p>\n

Germany<\/a> offers a somewhat different case. The rundfunkbeitrag, the mandatory household levy that funds ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio, is increasingly unpopular. Critics argue that the system is bloated, opaque and poorly adapted to contemporary media habits. <\/p>\n

The sheer scale of German public broadcasting, with its multitude of channels and regional structures, has come to be seen as anachronistic even by some of its traditional defenders.<\/p>\n

Politicians from German chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s<\/a> CDU have accused broadcasters of ideological bias and of marginalising conservative viewpoints, while the far-right AfD has called openly for their abolition. <\/p>\n

Others locate the problem less in politics than in institutional culture, pointing to bureaucratic inertia, managerial self-preservation and programming that struggles to connect with everyday concerns. <\/p>\n

Reforms aimed at streamlining services and reducing costs have been agreed in principle, but critics warn that these risk hollowing out the cultural and educational core of the public service remit.<\/p>\n

In Italy<\/a>, the politicisation of public broadcasting is older and more overt. RAI has long been subject to influence from whichever coalition happens to be in power, but tensions have intensified under the government of Giorgia Meloni<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Journalists have staged strikes in protest at changes in editorial direction and management decisions perceived as aligning RAI more closely with government priorities, a phenomenon widely labelled \u201cTeleMeloni\u201d in Italian media circles. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0RT\u00c9 radio at 100: Brendan Balfe on a century of Irish broadcasting<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The most dramatic recent crisis, however, has unfolded in the UK<\/a>. The BBC<\/a> has been battered by allegations of systemic editorial bias following the leak of an internal memo by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to its editorial standards committee. <\/p>\n

The document accused the corporation of repeated failings in coverage of the 2024 US presidential election, the Gaza<\/a> war and transgender issues, and highlighted a Panorama documentary that edited a Donald Trump<\/a> speech in a way that distorted its meaning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The resulting controversy led to the resignations<\/a> of director general Tim Davie and BBC News chief Deborah Turness, plunging the organisation into its gravest institutional crisis in decades. <\/p>\n

The affair quickly became politicised, seized upon by figures on the right and populist fringe as proof that the BBC is incapable of impartiality and should therefore lose its licence-fee funding altogether.<\/p>\n

That debate is made more acute by timing. The BBC\u2019s Royal Charter expires next year and the British government has already launched a public consultation on its replacement. <\/p>\n

Alternatives to the licence fee, once unthinkable, are now openly discussed as streaming platforms and changing consumption habits undermine the logic of universal household payment.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0A smaller RT\u00c9 does not mean a hollowed-out RT\u00c9<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Despite all this, the BBC remains one of the most trusted news sources in the UK, with reach figures that commercial rivals can only envy. <\/p>\n

The contradiction between high aggregate trust and intense vocal hostility from particular constituencies captures the dilemma facing public service broadcasting across Europe.<\/p>\n

These controversies share a common pattern. Public broadcasters are no longer simply criticised for individual editorial decisions; their legitimacy is questioned wholesale. <\/p>\n

In an environment of fragmented audiences, algorithmic media and permanent political mobilisation, impartiality itself becomes a contested concept, with different groups interpreting the same output as evidence of bias in opposite directions.<\/p>\n

For RT\u00c9, then, this centenary arrives at a moment when some of these pressures are impossible to ignore. <\/p>\n

However, Bakhurst has so far been spared the level of personalised political attack that has engulfed some of his European counterparts. Whether that remains the case is a question which will probably depend less on RT\u00c9\u2019s own reform efforts than on whether Ireland\u2019s political culture follows the trajectories now visible elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first transmission by 2RN, the modest radio service that would evolve into Radio \u00c9ireann and later RT\u00c9,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[3412,356,18,117,2220,6621,19,17,371,16036,1181,1294],"class_list":{"0":"post-271709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-italy","17":"tag-kevin-bakhurst","18":"tag-rte","19":"tag-uk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115852432003973470","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}