Northern Ireland is a delicate place. Overt violence is largely at an end but division is everywhere. Catholics and Protestants largely live apart, socialise apart, and educate their kids apart. It does not take much to antagonise the more excitable in each community. Just wind them up with a few well-worn phrases and or dog whistle images and sit back and watch them. One wind-up merchant is Stephan Nolan who has a weekday radio programme on BBC Radio Ulster. His phone-in show simply relies on igniting already existing prejudice. It is cheap in the sense that it costs little (apart from Nolan’s very large salary). There are no reports to edit, or ‘talent’ to pay. Just pick a controversial subject and give out the phone number and – hey presto – those with an axe to grind have a venue. On a daily basis cheap shot radio platforms self-appointed community spokespeople and individuals who set up their own NGOs simply to gain attention to themselves and their partisan causes.
Journalist Cahair O’Kane had a wonderful take-down of Nolan, and cheap shot radio, in The Irish News the other week:
“Sammy from the Shankill rings in and is given the airtime to vent his fury at the GAA.
He doesn’t have to be right. He just has to be loud.
And then naturally the other side reacts. Seamy from Andersonstown is on, feeling that he has defend his side.
The same applies the other way around. Unionists take a kicking on the show too, and there are elements of nationalism that can’t wait to get stuck in when it happens.
The appetite for fury is never-ending, and so round and round and round it goes.”
Nolan’s programme is not the original author of division in Northern Ireland. But it perpetuates old divisions and creates new ones. It is radio without social purpose. It does not inform or educate. It is simply entertainment – but entertainment at the cost of perpetuating hatred and division. And here is the thing: the Nolan programme is from the BBC – the national broadcaster funded through near mandatory subscription. This blog post is not a generalised attack on the BBC. The right-wing press has maintained a shrill war on the BBC for decades now. The BBC generally has a social purpose. The key point of the blogpost is to underline that the BBC has responsibilities. These responsibilities are heightened in a deeply-divided society.
The good news is that people are switching off Nolan – listening figures are on a downward trend. Many people have simply had enough of what can be described as hate radio. But the BBC should take a good hard look at itself. It is simply unsustainable in 2020 that the BBC – on a daily basis – sets fire to petrol in the name of ‘journalism’. The BBC wants us to believe – I assume – that they are neutral and are merely reflecting the views of people. But that is not the case. The BBC is not neutral in this. It is a conscious actor in a sectarian space.
rogermacginty 
So sad that this fellow uses BBC Ulster to essentially mobilize on the basis of grievance, rather than provide people with something more useful like informed perspectives on a shared community problem, constructive opportunities for dialogue, policy input. We have the same problem here. Listening and dialoguing are gone by the wayside. Calls for new conformity and alignment with a given agenda have risen to the top of what passes for discourse