This week I discussed the Laffoy commission collapse with a friend of mine, a priest. From my own perch I put it to him that the church had not exactly covered itself in glory in its defensive attitude to the commission, its failure to take responsibility for what went on in its own institutions and its inability to say sorry, writes Kathleen O'Meara
But what I heard back highlighted for me the role of another player in the whole saga - the media.
He spoke about how people close to him - friends who are priests, teachers, nuns who managed these institutions - have had their sense of personal worth blighted and in some cases destroyed by the collective guilt which the nation is currently mired in, and the blame game being played out.
He told me of a teacher who, having given a lifetime of service to a community, began to ask herself in her old age if she herself had abused anyone. Guilt and blame seemed to soak into her, into the empathy which had made her such a loved teacher in the first place, poisoning her sense of her worth as a teacher, so much that she needed her friends and her family to affirm her.
And he spoke about how every episode reported in the media seemed to add to the weight of guilt. Not, of course, that the media, in reporting the abuse, is responsible for that guilt. The source of it is in the abuse, but he wondered aloud if the media ever thought about whether the way the story is told becomes part of it - in this case, the national story of how so many vulnerable people were abused and damaged, and the need to heal that and move on. But this is not how this story is being told. It is only being told as a story of blame and anger, about who is right and who is wrong, and in that story there will be no healing.
I recall being on strike in RTÉ when the X case broke in 1992 and commenting to one of my striking colleagues that we'd better get back to work soon because the nation needed to speak to itself. In the days after we returned to work, the airwaves filled with the angst of a nation debating a serious moral dilemma.
In this space, it needs all the skills of an experienced journalist - be he broadcaster, producer, writer, commentator or editor - to provide guidance to help the nation steer itself through murky waters and into a calm space at peace with itself.
It requires leadership and it carries huge responsibility - and power. It is a power which has grown as the authority of the other power centres in our society wanes. Like any power, it can be abused but unlike other powers in our society, we have allowed it to be unaccountable.
When the media itself thunders about the right of abuse victims to have a place to be heard and even congratulates itself for providing that space, and believes that it is holding the church and other powers accountable, perhaps it might like to consider that it often creates victims itself when it abuses its own power, and has refused so far to give its own victims a place to tell their story and to ask for, and get, an apology and closure.
In July 1998 I published a proposal for a voluntary press council for Ireland, independently chaired, to include not only the industry itself but representatives of a broad cross-section of Irish society. It was welcomed by the NUJ and I circulated the proposal not only to editors and proprietors, but also to every voluntary organisation listed in the IPA yearbook.
The silence from the industry - apart from the NUJ - was deafening, but there was a loud "yes" for the idea from the voluntary sector, the third pillar in our wider community.
Among the responses was from an agency working in the Third World which raised the issue of how the poor there are portrayed as helpless all the time. I also received a response about how suicide is reported, another on anorexia and bulimia. Among other issues raised were racism and refugees, the portrayal of the Traveller community, the glorification of crime, tolerance of alcohol, the invasion of privacy, and the use of photographs of the dead, especially murder victims.
I recall hearing from Victim Support of the extraordinary hurt and damage caused to the families of murder victims, in particular to hear their loved one described on the airwaves as "the blonde whose body was naked" and how this added hugely to their grief and heartbreak. From a news point of view, surely it is only relevant that she has been murdered. What does naked and blonde have to do with it?
Where did this family have to go to say that this was wrong and ask for a real apology? Yes, there is the readers' representative, yes there is the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, but that's not enough. And there is no place where the industry discusses with itself its own standards, its own code of practice, its own best way of doing things, and its own accountability.
That is the central reason for the proposal that the press council be voluntary, because it would then be the industry offering the victims of its power a place to come and say, I feel you did me a wrong and I ask you to correct it. And I ask you to apologise. And they willingly do it, rather than resist and have to be dragged into a court and forced to do it.
At the heart of this idea is an admission that yes, the media is powerful and yes, power should be accountable - and no, we are not always right.
I know from speaking to journalists that a number want to see this happen but they seem to be waiting for someone else to do it. But the day will come, and it's probably not that far away, when the media abuse their power in a way in which the public is so offended that it demands a response. And that response will be Righteous Michael, the Minister for Justice, telling us that we need a law to control the media.
I don't favour that, but I can see it happening if the industry itself doesn't take this ball and run with it.
Sen Kathleen O'Meara (Labour) is a former RTÉ journalist
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