Dr Daly calls for council to monitor media standards

THE former Catholic primate, Cardinal Cahal Daly, yesterday said there was a need for some kind of media ethics and standards council in this country. Dr Daly said that there has not been nearly enough analysis and criticism and self-criticism of media by media here.

Speaking on the last day of the "Church and Media" conference at All Hallows College, Dublin, Dr Daly also said there was a need for media principals and practitioners to be formally trained in the moral issues which lie within areas in the electronic and print media.

He warned against media monopolies, which he described as a danger in a democratic society, and said commercial control of media needed constant scrutiny.

Beginning his address, he said his intention was not to be negative "but to put forward for consideration some suggestions about ways in which the credibility of the media might be still further enhanced."

He regarded it as highly important that the freedom of media be respected and indeed zealously guarded. Freedom of the media was essential for a free society, he said, and a prerequisite for the healthy functioning of democracy. He believed political control or political manipulation of the media was "an abomination."

Agreeing with the view that "every broadcast is a moral act", he said: "So is every editorial or news story or feature or article." It was therefore all the more necessary, he felt, that there be "voluntary agreement by the media themselves on the adoption of an ethical code of journalistic and media practice".

In an ideal world that would be sufficient to prevent abuses, he said, but in the real world something more was needed "in the way of some kind of media ethics and standards council, whose rulings would be made public, and which would have the power to investigate complaints and whose findings would be given some degree of binding force."

Calling for more self-criticism within the media, he said that "at present, it would seem that every institution in Ireland is subject to judgment by the media, except the media themselves." Judgment of one's peers, he felt, was usually the most effective, as well as generally the fairest form of judgment.

He was critical of "a slippage of standards in media over recent years," the blurring of distinction between facts and comment, and what he described as "a kind of creeping "tabloidisation" of main-stream media."

He was on record, he added, as having said that the media had done a service to the church in Ireland in regard to scandals which had occurred. "Though it could well be argued that the amount of space and time devoted to comment and speculation has been disproportionate, the media have discharged their rightful function in reporting these scandals," he said.