Public anger over recent media coverage has reignited debate over regulation as the Defamation Bill limps forward, writes Michael Foley
With the Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, describing media coverage of the death of a young female Garda sergeant in childbirth as "disgusting, hurtful, tasteless and obscene" and while the public, or that section who feel moved to telephone radio stations, kept Joe Duffy's phones hopping on RTÉ's Livelineas they vented their anger at the same coverage, it appeared to be just another ordinary week in media-land when the press showed just why there is a need for a press council.
But it was not just another week because it was also the week when advertisements had appeared seeking applications for members of the press council and when media organisations were discussing who would represent them on the council.
It was also the week when the press council launched its own website, giving the public the first tangible evidence that the council might actually happen after years of discussion and debate.
It is, of course, another week in which the reform of the law of defamation will be discussed in the Seanad. The Defamation Bill will bring reform to a law that was reviewed by the Law Reform Commission in 1990, but whose recommendations were ignored as politicians looked to see what was in it for them, and found little.
Every so often when advocates for reform might be getting through there would be another enormous libel or breach of privacy and it would be back to the start.
Then the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, said he was going to more or less implement the Law Reform Commission's recommendations. After expert committees had sat and conferences and consultations had taken place a Bill that included a press council and press ombudsman as a quid pro quo was brought before a reluctant Cabinet. The Bill emerged a bit battered, with a new Privacy Bill attached, and it is now wending its way through the upper House, and doing so slowly. The Privacy Bill has been detached and parked, with the possibility that it will emerge some time in the future.
The Senators, it seems, are not simply going to rubber-stamp the legislation and some Senators, including David Norris, are very much against it.
He told the Seanad when the Bill was introduced: "I am not impressed either by the Bill or the proposal for a press council."
But if the press council is on the way, how would it have dealt with the coverage of the death of Tania Corcoran and her baby boy? Under the privacy clause the new code, which has now been published, recognises that privacy is a human right, one that has been incorporated into Irish law through the European Convention on Human Rights. It states that readers are entitled to have news and comment presented with respect for the privacy and sensibilities of individuals, so long as that does not prevent the publications of matters of public record or interest.
Sympathy and discretion must be shown at all time in seeking information in situations where there is personal grief or shock and the feelings of grieving families should be taken into account.
While it is difficult to predict what a council that has not yet been established would do, it does seem clear that the sort of headlines published and the mentioning of Tania Corcoran's job and that of her husband were irrelevant and invaded their privacy. The code clearly is also opposed to any harassment of family members to obtain photographs and interviews, a practice so colourfully called the "death knock" by British journalists. And it is clear that the grief of the family was not taken into account.
The deaths of the young mother and her child are of public interest and a public inquest will presumably be held. The death of a woman in childbirth is now rare, so questions will have to be asked. However, that is as far as it goes.
Tina Corcoran's occupation, that of her husband and other details of their family life are not of any possible public interest at this time. Under the rules of the new council, if the newspapers had been found to have acted contrary to the code they would have to publish the adjudication. One of the newspapers has apologised.
However, it must concern proponents of the self-regulatory system that editors, some of whom were closely involved in the process of designing the system of regulation, should either through ignorance or for other reasons have allowed these stories and headlines to have appeared. It does not augur well for the new council if some editors see the code not as a guideline to good ethical behaviour but as something to be circumvented.
Michael Foley is a lecturer in journalism and teaches media ethics at the Dublin Institute of Technology.