What have we got to lose by opening up a debate about the media and how it might contribute to the achievement of a rich participatory democracy?

Stephen Baker is a Lecturer at Ulster University 

Earlier in January, a report was launched setting out proposals for a new public media organisation in the event of a united Ireland. Funded by progressive taxation rather than a licence free, Public Media Ireland – as we have tentatively named it – is envisaged as decentralised and democratically accountable. The full report is available here.

Co-authored with colleagues, Dr Phil Ramsey from Ulster University, Dr Dawn Wheatley and Dr Roddy Flynn from Dublin City University, our motivation for writing the report was preparedness for a possible future. We reckon that in the event of a united Ireland it would be foolhardy to proceed without a media sphere capable of imagining a new country, in a place with a painful legacy of colonialism, partition, sectarianism, civil conflict and abuse. A public media would also need to serve a fledgling democracy.

Nations don’t lie waiting to be called into existence at an appointed hour by policy makers, administrators, PR and marketing consultants. They are a consequence of human imagination, invention and cultural endeavour – the work of artists and storytellers, and, of course, their audiences. Meanwhile, democracies thrive only when attended by honest, trusted journalism made available to a public with the media literacy to engage with it and act upon it.

The UK offers a salutary lesson in the consequences of not sustaining robust public institutions like the BBC. Compromised by marketisation, hollowed out by cuts and subject to long standing political interference, the BBC has suffered a crisis of legitimacy. It is part of a broader public realm, run down by decades of privatisation and underfunding that has dissolved the social glue that held the UK together.

A united Ireland would wish to avoid that fate. However, RTÉ, like its contemporary the BBC, is mired in controversies, leaching legitimacy and leaden footed in a dynamic political and media realm. A new Ireland then is an opportunity to start afresh, with a new public media designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Some have argued that this is an unpropitious moment for such a proposal. The launch of our report came just days before the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s warning at Davos that what the world is experiencing at the moment is a rupture, not a transition. Everything seems to be aflame. Demagogues rule. Markets are volatile. Wars and genocides rage. The world is reeling from a pandemic. Climate catastrophe is guaranteed. Our democracies seem to hang perilously by a thread. To borrow a phrase from Welsh intellectual Raymond Williams, it feels like we are confronted by the “slow cancellation of the future”.

Yet it’s not as if the old national broadcasters were formed in a period of tranquillity. They emerge in response to domestic and global storms. RTÉ Radio’s predecessor, R2N, began broadcasting in 1926, under the auspices of the Irish Post Office. The BBC received its Royal Charter in the following year. The recent history had been one of constitutional upheaval across these islands – rebellion, a war of independence and civil war, as well as the growing political assertiveness of the working class and women. Home and abroad, the era was marked by a crisis of liberal confidence in the wake of the Great War and the October Revolution, not to mention a flu pandemic.

Sam McBride has argued that our report draws attention to the enormity of the task ahead if a united Ireland is to be realised. But, he says, if it is worth doing, then the magnitude of that task is no reason to turn away from it. We concur. We might add that whether there is a united Ireland or not, these islands need new democratic public media. Our report is an attempt to start a conversation about this, to reject pessimism and stake a claim in a democratic future. The alternative seems to be to do nothing, to make no preparations, to merely hope that the status quo will hold and that tomorrow doesn’t belong to the powerful nefarious forces actively shaping an oligarchic dystopia.

There is a well-known cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Joel Pett. It depicts a climate change summit, where on stage someone is listing the advantages of tackling global warming – green jobs, liveable cities, clean water and healthy children. A man is pictured standing up in the audience, angrily making an objection. “What if it’s a big hoax and we make the world a better place for nothing?” he says. Correspondingly, what have we got to lose by opening up a debate about the media and how it might contribute to the achievement of a rich participatory democracy?

This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.