Sorry, But I Support Free Speech
Tonight on Scotland at Ten, a former heroin user gave us a street-level description of her attempts to find help for her addiction. Zoë Ward told how she was prescribed methadone and spoke of the variable quality of service at treatment centres across the country.
"in some you just get handed a prescription once a week. You don't get any contact with anyone."
She went on to say how the system itself almost conspired to send her back into the clutches of the drug dealers but then, in Edinburgh, she found treatment centres staffed with psychiatric nurses and an atmosphere of support and trust.
Scotland at Ten was discussing the story that had been running on Radio Scotland throughout the day: the call for some heroin users to be given the drug on prescription. Reporter Bob Wylie had broken this morning as part of our monthly Investigation programme. He'd been to Hamburg to find out more about the supposed success of a project there. It had prompted much heated debate and that debate looks like it will continue in the Scottish Parliament.
For me, however, it was Zoë’s words that proved how real-life experience can add value to a discussion and instantly remove it from the realm of the purely political or academic.
Yet there are critics who complain about this aspect of our programming. They seize on words like "human interest" or "accessible" as proof that Radio Scotland is "dumbing down". Such critics - people who struggle to fill columns in Sunday newspapers - often hark back to a supposed golden age when the only people allowed on the airwaves were those who had the proper credentials to be there.
In other words, people like themselves.
Only they, it seems, should be allowed access to our studios to voice their opinions, but not members of the public who are "ill-informed".
I don't buy that. If we're talking about hospitals I want to hear from doctors, nurses and patients. If the debate centres on schools then I think we ought to know the views of teachers, parents and pupils. And if we're talking about drug addiction then who better to voice an opinion than those who have lived through that particular nightmare?
I'm very proud of programmes like The Investigation and Scotland at Ten and I'll continue to champion human interest journalism if that means journalism with humanity and reporters who investigate the issues that matter to people.
I'll fight for accessible broadcasting instead of the inaccessible kind. And I'll support the listeners’ right to talk instead of being talked about.
In a democracy, I think they call that free speech.
