Opinion

Denis Bradley: Hours of radio debate and argument may be doing more harm than good

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: sans-serif, Arial, Verdana, &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;; ">The volume of current affairs and news broadcast by BBC NI would be weighty in any community but in one which is still struggling with a history of violence and a contested future, it may be destructive</span>
The volume of current affairs and news broadcast by BBC NI would be weighty in any community but in one which is still struggling with a history of v The volume of current affairs and news broadcast by BBC NI would be weighty in any community but in one which is still struggling with a history of violence and a contested future, it may be destructive

Mae West said that too much of a good thing can be wonderful. Probably true, but that does not change the conclusion that we are having too much of Radio Ulster and Foyle.

Seventeen or more hours of current affairs feeding off fourteen or more hours of news may be too weighty for our social wellbeing and our mental health.

Thirty or more hours a week of news, issues, discussions, debates, arguments, drawn mostly from only a million and a half people, the population of a medium size city, might be doing a lot more harm than good.

It is generally accepted that bad news outweighs good news across the media. The volume of current affairs and news broadcast by BBC NI would be weighty in any community but in one which is still struggling with a history of violence and a contested future, it may be destructive. Destructive to the populace, to the quality of broadcasting and to the standard of political governance.

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Covid and lockdown gave us a glimpse into the tension between the need to be properly informed and the need to have internal space that is reasonably free of external tensions. Radio is the most intimate medium. It is the best provider of information and the best forum for mature and transformative debate. An overdose of information, however, or an overly combative stream of rancour can affect the mood of listeners and the morale of a small community. BBC management gives little indication of being sensitive to those tensions.

Quality programmes require good production which takes time, effort and money. Thirty hours or more is too much in which to achieve consistent quality; so programmes are too often filled with repetition of issues and repetition of contributors. The easiest way to fill the space is to seek out controversy and encourage diverse and conflicting opinions.

Controversy is easily found in any society, but in our part of the world we can trip over it at every corner. Instead of interrogative, instructive and constructive debate, which we need and, to be fair, which we sometimes get, the bulk of the output is combative and negative. The space must be filled, and the BBC has learned how to fill it without too much attention to the consequences.

But the greatest damage may be done to governance. Radio is a forum where politicians, civic, church and institutional leaders can promote their ideas and where there can be a thorough but fair interrogation of effectiveness, transparency and equality. That needs the broadest and most representative mixture of voices and ideas that can be garnered. The atmosphere that has been nurtured on BBC Radio Ulster and Foyle since the peace process has driven away more voices than it has attracted. Only the most vocal of our politicians are regulars. Most clerics avoid it like the plague. Key personnel in many of our most important institutions never appear, most likely out of fear. Many do not feel equipped to partake in an atmosphere that is not always conducive to explanation or exploration.

That critique has been less prevalent during lockdown. Virologists have taken over the airways and commentators and listeners have left the disagreements to the scientists themselves. But that is not going to last forever.

We are on the threshold of some major debates that have proven themselves very capable of raising passions and hackles. Brexit will shortly push its way back onto the agenda and an economic border on the Irish Sea will crash on to the airways. When and how to prepare the border poll promised in the Good Friday Agreement hasn’t gone away.

These critical discussions will take place in the years marking the centenary of the establishment of Northern Ireland.

BBC would be well advised to begin exploring its capability of handling the coming debates in a way that does more good than harm.