CONNECT: What David Mellor once termed the last chance saloon for the British press re-opened this week, with the publication of a report by a Commons committee on privacy and press freedom.
Twelve years ago the second Calcutt Report's call for Britain to introduce a privacy law to curb press intrusions led to the country's newspapers and magazines hastily setting up the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). As a result, the threat of a privacy law was averted. David Calcutt was knighted.
That suited all parties involved. Despite renewed demands by the Commons committee, there will be no privacy law this time either. There's always after-hours in the "last chance saloon" even though the PCC can be toothless - wealthy people and "celebrities" regularly bypass it and head straight for the courts - and it's compromised by having editors on board.
The overarching debate on privacy is whether press self-regulation or state-regulation is preferable. Self-regulation, as evidenced by the PCC, is certainly not perfect, but a privacy law would further curb any chance of developing a "free press".
Politicians might well welcome such a law which the more unscrupulous of them could abuse. Introducing it however, could be political suicide. Dedicated to image politics, Tony Blair's government needs a press that's not implacably hostile. He won't, therefore, back moves that could shackle its ability to make profits. Invasions of privacy will continue even though a reformed PCC with some baby teeth will seek to limit the trend.
Like Reginald Maudling's "acceptable level of violence" for Northern Ireland, an acceptable level of privacy invasions by the press appears to be the pragmatic ideal for British politicians. This week's report recommended front-page retractions, a scale of fines for serious invasions of privacy and the removal of rogue editors who sit on the PCC. It also suggested an independent ombudsman be appointed to adjudicate in disputes between papers and members of the public. Such recommendations, plus "league tables" showing persistently offending publications, make sense. Only publishers, editors and journalists profiteering from gratuitously invading people's privacy could object.
Still, the power play between politicians and the press remains, in Ireland as in Britain, essentially a game. Here, most squabbles have been over reform of the libel laws. The press complains while sections of it behave so grossly that it's easy to make a case that journalism must clean up its act before it can be granted increased freedoms.
Meanwhile, everybody knows that journalism won't clean up its act so long as its dirty act makes loot. The result is that reasonable and important journalism remains shackled because of the behaviour of rogues egged on by editors seeking to boost circulation and make money for proprietors. It's a game and it's not edifying.
In Britain, the Commons committee which re-mooted the introduction of a privacy law did so to give any such measure a democratic mandate. It's preferable, their argument went, that parliament should control this aspect of the press rather than society arriving at a charter made piecemeal through judge-made laws. Judges, after all, are unelected and unaccountable.
Anyway, there are lessons in the British experience for the press in this State. With British papers - most notably tabloids - grabbing an increasing share of the Irish market, their invasive culture is infecting Irish journalism. "Celebrity" scandals sell newspapers and generate profits by appealing to readers' natural prurience. That's undeniable.
So, we get the practically unanswerable riddle of defining the "public interest" as opposed to what interests the public. Salacious journalism insists it gives the public what it wants: sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll and scandals involving sports and soap opera stars. Its own excesses help to create demand, but such journalism prefers not to talk about that.
The longer view makes this clear, however. Over the last few decades the press, like TV, has become increasingly salacious. It hasn't done so merely because readers have demanded sexier, more invasive journalism. Rather, people have been nurtured by progressively sleazier stories to expect ever more outrageous yarns.
In that sense, the decline has been incremental and actively driven by sleaze-hounds hiding behind guff about simply giving punters what they want. The analogy of a drugs pusher ensuring that buyers require more and more to get the same buzz is apt. Perhaps self-regulation is ultimately impossible and more state-regulation will be required.
If so, the hunger for profits on the part of "journalism" that is really part of the soft-porn industry could consume the entire enterprise. For the present however, there will be no privacy laws in Ireland or Britain, even though rogues will resist the kind of reasonable measures suggested for the PCC and which ought to be adopted in this State too.
When it comes to privacy invasions, it should be remembered that more than four of every five complaints to the PCC are from ordinary people who feel violated. It's the "celebrity" stories that make the noisiest splashes and consequently loom disproportionately large. Even in the Last Chance Saloon, champagne-guzzlers make the biggest profits for the bar-owners.