State urged to omit jail threat

Defamation Bill:Ireland should "show the rest of the world and create a wonderful example" by becoming the first western EU state to drop legislation that allows for the jailing of journalists for defamation, according to an official from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Miklos Haraszti, media freedom representative of OSCE, expressed concern about the Defamation Bill and said Ireland "should not pass laws which are unusable".

Strasbourg case law prohibits the jailing of journalists for defamation and western EU countries which adhere to case law are still "not ready to get rid of the law, even in Ireland", he said in Dublin at the annual congress of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ).

The Defamation Bill 2006 lapsed with the last Dáil but Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan promised to change and reintroduce it in the Seanad.

Mr Haraszti said section 34 of the Bill was "very progressive" and abolished common law offences of criminal, seditious and obscene libel, but section 35 allowed for a sentence of up to five years for the publication of "gravely harmful statements".

The OSCE representative said that the majority of journalists jailed in central and eastern Europe were imprisoned for defamation and a move by Ireland to drop such legislation would be a "wonderful gesture" and a great example, especially to central and eastern Europe.

Mr Haraszti said the protection of sources, including anonymous sources, was a vital 21st-century standard for investigative journalists. Belgium had recently passed "shield" legislation to protect journalists' sources, both known and unknown, and the US Congress was in the process of passing a similar law.

Paul Gillespie, foreign policy editor of The Irish Times, explained the background to the newspaper's case about the source of an article on financial payments to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern when he was minister for finance in 1993.

Mr Gillespie said the decision to publish the article was made because the matter arose during the private phase of the Mahon tribunal's operations and the paper believed it might not otherwise have been made public.

The High Court decision requiring Irish Times Editor Geraldine Kennedy and reporter Colm Keena to answer questions from the Mahon tribunal relating to the source of the story is being appealed to the Supreme Court.

It was the paper's view that the High Court judgment had not given proper weighting to the issue of "public interest", he said.

Press Ombudsman John Horgan said a major issue in the media was privacy, which was "not as simple as journalists or politicians or others need it to be". He said that in the past the definition of "the public interest" was made "on the hop" by journalists. One of the issues for the Press Council would be to arrive at a proper definition of "the public interest" over time.