Media freedom and regulatory independence faced a direct challenge this week when the Minister for Communications, Patrick O’Donovan, threatened interference in both. During local radio interviews, he called coverage of the fuel protests “lopsided” and “skewed” towards the protesters. Targeting RTÉ specifically, he announced plans to instruct the media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, to review “the whole issue of balance”. O’Donovan equated this to the Minister for Justice initiating a review of An Garda’s role.

The fundamental issue is that news media are not State services like An Garda Síochána. They serve democracy precisely by remaining autonomous from the State. Meanwhile, independent regulators, Coimisiún na Meán and the Press Council, provide mechanisms for complaints about fairness and accuracy. Many people, including politicians, may question the effectiveness of this system, but it is entirely inappropriate for a minister to order a review of editorial decisions.

Unsurprisingly, the National Union of Journalists called O’Donovan’s remarks “sinister and deeply disturbing”. Following criticism and a meeting with the regulator, he backtracked. There will be no review.

While O’Donovan’s comments deserve condemnation, they also raise questions about media freedom that merit deeper examination.

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Media freedom concerns journalists’ ability to report on matters of public interest without pressure to present or suppress certain facts or perspectives. This is essential to democracy, as it provides access to relevant information and viewpoints, including facts some would prefer remained hidden. Journalists who published factual profiles of a protest leader last week, noting Revenue and animal cruelty judgments, were subjected to online threats from protest supporters and so, in some cases, were their family members. That should also be condemned as an assault on media freedom.

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Restrictions on media freedom are usually associated with the governments of autocracies and weak democracies. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán enacted his “illiberal democracy” by capturing public broadcasting, consolidating private media ownership among his allies, diverting State funds to those outlets and intimidating reporters.

There is growing alarm at the manifestation of these tactics in established democracies. In the UK, political appointments have undermined the BBC, while the regulator has failed to do anything about the blatant political bias of GB News. In the US, Trump-aligned figures now control vast segments of the news and entertainment market while billionaires across the western world are increasingly open about their intention to treat the media they own as propaganda tools.

Some call it a “Trumpian” turn, but the reality is that many governments are antagonistic towards journalism, irrespective of their professed support for media freedom. Barack Obama was often hailed as a liberal icon, but oversaw unprecedented infringements on US journalism including the prosecution of whistleblowers and surveillance of newsroom phone records and sources.

And historically, Ireland’s record on media freedom is poor. The 1960 Act that established RTÉ granted the relevant minister power to ban broadcasts of “any particular matter”. Invoking the national interest, successive governments imposed significant restrictions on RTÉ’s coverage of the Troubles. In the 1970s, minister Conor Cruise O’Brien sought to “cleanse” republicanism from print and broadcast media. A decade later, Charlie Haughey’s government instructed the Gardaí to tap the phones of two leading journalists. O’Donovan may be guilty of poor understanding, but he hasn’t actively suppressed media freedom like some of his predecessors.

O’Donovan’s reasoning may have been self-interested, but he raised a legitimate question about balance in news reporting. Broadcast coverage of current affairs is regulated for impartiality and fairness. That’s why media presenters frequently make interjections “in fairness to” those “not present to defend themselves”. During elections, broadcasters are asked to consider the fair allocation of airtime for all candidates and parties and “to seek out the widest range of opinions relating to the relevant issues”. These are sound principles, but they are increasingly difficult to achieve.

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The two-party system has fragmented into multiple small parties and many Independents. This has created a recurring headache for RTÉ’s leaders’ debates with conflicting views on who should be invited to participate. Working with considerably less resources, local radio stations have also had to negotiate ballooning candidate lists and the emergence of fringe actors.

Meanwhile, the traditional politics of representation is breaking down. Media outlets rely heavily on interest groups and established commentators to act as spokespeople for entire sectors of society. Ordinarily, the media might call on the Irish Farmers Association, which has 70,000 members, to represent the views of that sector, but the fuel protests exposed significant gaps between sectoral organisations and the people they are supposed to represent. More generally, there is a convenient fiction that diverse groups of people – religious believers, rural dwellers, parents or the disabled, for example – can be reduced to the views of individual interest groups and spokespeople.

Part of the rationale for media freedom is the airing of diverse views. Yet, across many countries, there are long-standing criticisms that commentators on current affairs operate in a media bubble. In the wake of the protests, it is fair to ask if news media do a good job of capturing and representing a range of public views. It would be interesting to see a detailed breakdown of whose voices and interests are over- and under-represented in newspaper columns and current affairs panel shows.

News organisations should reflect on these issues. It falls on the regulator to update its codes on fairness, objectivity and impartiality. Coimisiún na Meán is already committed to a public consultation on its codes for news and current affairs broadcasting. There is an important opportunity here to move beyond narrow, technical definitions of balance and engage with the deeper question of how media can genuinely reflect and serve a diverse society in an era of fragmented politics and declining trust in institutions. It’s a complex issue, but Ireland’s long term social cohesion requires that we find solutions. Protecting media freedom doesn’t mean politicians shouldn’t criticise the media. The role of a media minister is, of course, a special case, but we need to continually ask questions about media ownership, interests and fair representation.

Eileen Culloty is an associate professor in the School of Communications at DCU, and deputy director of the DCU Institute for Media, Democracy and Society

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