Without warning, this week, I found myself thinking about my pre-political life as a teacher. More specifically, I found myself wondering how fair I was when one child made a mistake as opposed to when another child made precisely the same mistake.
Did I just deal with the mistake or did I allow my own opinion of the student in question to influence my reaction?
If there's one thing the interaction between media and politicians - and indeed between media and media - this last week or so demonstrates, it is that a sense of fair play is inordinately influenced, not only by circumstance, but also by the personality and reputation of the person or, indeed, the newspaper requiring fair play.
There were some complaints recently about a popular radio presenter giving a leading politician a hard time; complaints, interestingly enough, not backed up by the politician himself. In fact the interview, if examined in vacuo, was rigorous but no more than anyone who has been in politics a long time should expect.
It is the wider pattern that may be worth examining. Are there other public figures who have undergone a more forgiving interview, either from this or any other top broadcaster because of circumstances or personality? Top broadcasters will instantly deny the possibility. Top politicians won't.
In Fianna Fail, for example, there is a long-standing conviction that interviewers in RTE tend to favour the left when interviewing politicians. Even in a situation where Fine Gael and Fianna Fail representatives are matched on a programme, the interviewers are unlikely to look warmly on the latter's arguments.
A variation of the same conviction applies within Fianna Fail to The Irish Times. There is a belief that The Irish Times, when it comes to Fianna Fail, is like the perfectionist parent from hell. No matter what you do right, you should have done more. No matter how good you are this week, look how bad you were last.
Fianna Fail would believe that this prejudice within The Irish Times is most nakedly on display when a Fianna Fail person makes a mistake. The thorniest recollection for many is the top-of-the-front-page story the paper manufactured out of a verbal slip of the tongue made by Albert Reynolds during an election.
What he meant was perfectly clear, but the paper made much negative play of his misuse of a prefix.
Not everybody in Fianna Fail who believes (as I do) in the reality of this prejudice within The Irish Times believes that its expression is orchestrated deliberately. Some of us go with Francis Bacon's comment that "the human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable in itself) draws all things else to support and agree with itself".
Or, to put it in a slightly less obtuse construction: once you have an unacknowledged prejudice, you are more likely to notice evidence which supports that prejudice and less likely to be engaged by evidence which doesn't.
This behaviour is a reality of group dynamics against which every group instinctively defends itself. The fact is that people inside a group are likely to attribute better motives and character to members of their own group than to those of another group, particularly one holding views opposed to the first group.
When things go wrong, people assign blame to members of the other group but find extenuating circumstances to apply to people within their own group.
What is astonishing is how little people, be they in politics or in media, are aware of this. So, when The Irish Times boobed recently in its interpretation of a document achieved under the Freedom of Information Act, people within the newspaper were taken aback by the gleeful response of many outsiders, not all of them members of Fianna Fail, to the error.
IT IS never fun to watch the ordinary slip on a banana skin, but it's delightful to watch the righteous come a cropper, and there are some who would feel that The Irish Times, just occasionally, mistakes its own values, beliefs and assumptions for objective reality.
But a mistake is only the first step in a complicated process. The next interesting step is how those who have had their pride pricked cope with the fall. In this instance, Geraldine Kennedy's appearance on The Last Word radio programme ranks with the all-time great recoveries.
After that comes how people who believe themselves to have been wronged earlier by the banana-slipper deal with it. In my view, there is only one way - absolute silence and rapid progression to the next item.
Although the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, was the person ostensibly damaged by the Irish Times error, I'm not sure he would feel like President Reagan's labour secretary who, after two years of litigation had proved him right and allegations against him wrong, asked plaintively: "What office do I go to get my reputation back?"
I would hope that the Minister for Finance will continue to deal with the newspaper with the contentious directness which is his best attribute.
I say "I would hope" because I was dismayed to hear during the week Joe Duffy claiming that since the Budget, the Minister has refused to talk to people in RTE; the implication being that he now accepts only softly served questions from other broadcasting stations.
If the Minister made such a decision, it would be a mistake, and a measure of the man will be a graceful, speedy and good-humoured retreat from such a pointlessly embattled position. How an organisation or an individual copes with a mistake often tells us more about the organisation or individual than did the original error.
When faced with a prejudice, the worst possible choice is to cut off contact with those holding that point of view. There is no surer way of perpetuating the false opinion than by refusing to confront those who hold it. Mr McCreevy must continue to deal openly with the relevant media outlets and simply provide them repeatedly with the evidence that shows how mistaken they were.
It is important to understand that this methodology does not guarantee a successful outcome, but a refusal to communicate does ensure no change will take place.