While most coverage of last week’s appearance by Ivan Yates before the Oireachtas media committee focused on the former Fine Gael minister’s robust defence of how he interprets potential conflicts of interest, there was more than that to chew over.
Yates found himself answering questions about his former role as co-presenter on the Path to Power podcast, as if he’d been caught running a Russian disinformation cell rather than gossiping about politics on the internet. He also pushed back against suggestions that podcasts needed more regulation.
Earlier, committee chair Alan Kelly had argued there was an “imbalance” in current proposals to amend broadcasting legislation and that the inclusion of podcasting in rules around objectivity and impartiality “has to be dealt with now”, adding “we can’t wait a number of years to deal with this issue”.
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Responding, Yates pointed out that podcasts are not the airwaves and should not be regulated like broadcast.
On this, at least, he is entirely correct.
Nevertheless, members of the committee seemed determined to treat the whole affair as if the difference between a live radio studio and a podcast feed is merely a matter of plug size. The more they searched for the regulatory switch marked “podcast”, the clearer it became that no such switch exists.
Instead, there’s a jumble of half-fitted wiring running back to an increasingly wheezy fuse box labelled Broadcasting Act 2009. That Act, in case anyone has forgotten, was drafted at a time when Nokia was the leading mobile phone manufacturer and Netflix was a postal DVD service.
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By the time it became law, it already looked past its sell-by date with its blithe assumption that media could be divided neatly into broadcast and print like two lines of railway track that would never meet. The world took one look at that model, shrugged, and bolted a motorway straight through the junction.
Successive governments have tried to update the system by applying band-aids.
The Online Safety and Media Regulation Act of 2022 was supposed to transpose the latest EU audiovisual directive into Irish law. It did so, more or less, but only for video. Audio-only podcasts were left floating outside the new regulations.
Coimisiún na Meán, the regulator set up following the passage of the Act, was sold as a modern, independent successor to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. But its tendency towards institutional empire-building is already visible.
Part of the confusion stems from Europe. The European Media Freedom Act, which arrived in August, defines a media service as anything offered to the public that informs, entertains or educates under editorial responsibility, delivered by any means.
That is admirably broad. It also means that a newspaper article, a radio bulletin and a fitness-influencer’s political diatribe might qualify, subject to implementation at national level.
The regulation requires member states to protect editorial independence and ensure transparency in state advertising. It does not mention podcasts by name, but it doesn’t need to. If everything is media, then everything is potentially regulated.
Meanwhile, the Government has produced not one but two pieces of legislation: a Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill and a Media Regulation Bill. Both remain in various stages of scrutiny. The Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill, which was what Kelly was referring to last week, proposes to regulate podcasts and web pages published by RTÉ and TG4 in the same way as their broadcast content, closing a loophole that has been visible since 2009.
In a separate universe, the Press Council and Press Ombudsman continue to operate on a voluntary membership basis for newspapers and news websites. Their code applies to all content produced by members, including podcasts.
Neither of these systems applies to Path to Power, The David McWilliams Show, My Therapist Ghosted Me or a host of other independently produced podcasts, many of which have amassed large audiences.
Alan Kelly and other media committee members clearly think they should, despite Yates pointing out that podcasts are closer to publishing than broadcasting.
Some are polished and professional. Others are chaotic and opinionated. Many are designed to appeal to specific audiences and do not pretend to offer the “fairness and objectivity” standard that the Broadcasting Act demands. Why should they?
That does not mean it’s a wild west out there. Although there may be no statutory route for a complaint about a controversial episode of an independently produced podcast, all the relevant legal provisions on defamation and other questions still apply. And there is a compelling argument for more rigorous policing of commercial sponsorships.
Ultimately, though, there is no logical reason why a podcast episode should be regulated any more than a Substack post, unless you believe that the spoken word possesses some magical power that demands stricter rules than text.
All of which brings us back to Coimisiún na Meán. The regulator insists it does not seek to expand its remit beyond what legislation requires.
Yet every fresh Bill seems to give it another set of responsibilities. The instinct of any new institution is to justify its existence. When in doubt, it reaches for more oversight. The danger is that an organisation whose DNA is rooted in broadcast regulation ends up imposing overly rigid standards on other forms of public expression simply because no one stopped to draw a line.
The committee’s interrogation of Ivan Yates may turn out to be a footnote. But it was a revealing one. The State is still trying to reconcile a regulatory system built for a vanishing world with a media ecosystem that refuses to sit still.
Until they accept that podcasts are not radio, politicians will continue to mistake category errors for scandals and mission creep for reform.
