14 MURPHY v. IRELAND JUDGMENT in contemporary Irish society on the part of adherents of both dominant and minority religions. Given this potentially incendiary situation, the State was entitled to act with caution in conditioning the circumstances in which religious material, and in particular religious advertising, would be made available in the broadcast media. The Government disputed that the Sunday Times and Handyside judgments (Handyside v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 7 December 1976, Series A no. 24, and Sunday Times v. the United Kingdom (no. 1), judgment of 26 April 1979, Series A no. 30) allowed the applicant to broadcast religious advertisements that offended, shocked and disturbed. The Sunday Times case could be distinguished from the present case: the former concerned expression of a political or public interest nature, the print media, and an editorial feature in a newspaper. The Government rejected the implication from the applicant's reliance on the Sunday Times jurisprudence that, in the area of religious advertising, one has the right to be a bit shocking, somewhat disturbing and mildly offensive. 39. Turning to the audio-visual (as opposed to print) context of the prohibition, the Government recalled that Article 10 § 1 specifically foresaw the regulation by a licensing system of the manner in which broadcasting was organised in a State's territory which control had to be justified for one of the reasons included in the second paragraph of Article 10 of the Convention. According to Convention jurisprudence relevant considerations included the nature and objectives of the proposed station, its potential audience and the rights and interests of a specific audience. The Government argued that control of the broadcasting media had been accepted as necessary for, inter alia, the orderly regulation of broadcasting enterprises and the appropriate allocation of limited broadcasting resources. In addition, and critically for the purposes of the present case, such regulation was necessary given the particularly intrusive and compelling nature of the broadcast media together with its consequent impact and potential for offence (including on the passive recipient). 40. As to the advertising context of the prohibition, the Government distinguished between paid advertising space and programmes, the latter being subject to the universally recognised and fundamental requirement of impartiality and neutrality. This was an obligation of the national and the independent broadcasters (section 18 of the 1960 Act and section 9 of the 1988 Act) and required each programme dealing with a controversial matter to be balanced or that the overall programming of the station on such matters would be such as to give a sufficient hearing to other or opposing views. Given the necessary neutrality of programmes, the State could expect a fair degree of tolerance on the part of the recipient. Conversely, the Government maintained that advertising was, by definition, partisan, onesided and unbalanced in which case the principle of impartiality could not