Irish Examiner view: Trusted content needs help and support

Vat on newspapers and their electronic versions should be abolished

In the UK, nearly 2m households told the BBC they did not watch any live television last year

Much of the heat over the long-delayed Future of Media Report has been generated by the rapid dismantling of its core, and most controversial, proposal... that RTÉ’s licence fee reliance should be scrapped by 2024 and replaced wholly by “general exchequer funds”.

The defenestration of Commission on the Future of Media chairman Brian MacCraith, and his key suggestion, was quick, given the proposals were so long in gestation. Taoiseach Micheál Martin effectively said disengaging the State broadcaster from the licence would not happen on his watch. And this will mean it doesn’t happen on Leo Varadkar’s either, when, as expected, he becomes Taoiseach. Whether anyone will want to go into the next election asking battered taxpayers to pick up even more of the tab for TV is unlikely.