The broadcast on TV3 last Sunday, Philomena's Story, is Philomena Byrne's account of 11 years spent in St Anne's in Booterstown which was an industrial school run by the Sisters of Mercy. This broadcast may eventually be seen as a turning point in the coverage of allegations of abuse, so serious are the questions raised about balance and fairness by the style and content of the programme, and by TV3's decision to broadcast it.
The Sisters of Mercy reject, in robust terms, the allegations made in Philomena's Story. The programme, made by Crescendo Concepts, is now the subject of a High Court action taken by the Sisters of Mercy against TV3, on grounds that the programme was in breach of the 1988 Radio and Television Act.
I am in no position to judge the truth or otherwise of Philomena Byrne's allegations. These include routine psychological and physical torture, deprivation of education, sexual abuse and rape which involved collusion between nuns and priests and which often took place in the chapel, being forced to witness sex between a nun and a priest, and being forced into a coffin on top of a corpse.
I have not interviewed Philomena Byrne or anyone who lived or worked in St Anne's, so I cannot judge the accuracy or otherwise of what she says. But I have read Bridge Across My Sorrows, by Philomena's sister, Christina Noble. According to this account, by the age of five, even before she entered St Anne's, Philomena had suffered unbearable deprivation and grief.
Philomena is Christina Noble's youngest sister, one of six surviving children of a family which lived in desperate poverty in the Liberties in Dublin. They were children of a loving, hard-working mother who had no power to curb the drinking of their alcoholic and violent father. Philomena's mother died when she was two.
Christina describes Philomena's trauma as she was forced by a grotesquely insensitive relative to kiss her dead mother goodbye: "I heard Philomena's screams as she in turn was pushed into the coffin and held against my mother's cold face."
Christina made futile and doomed attempts at age 10 to replace her mother. They were on the verge of starvation, flea-infested, filthy and utterly neglected by all the adults who should have protected them. Philomena clung to Christina to the extent that she called her "Mam". Three years later Philomena was wrested away from this second mother and sent along with her sister Kathy to St Anne's.
Let me repeat, I am in no position to judge the accuracy or otherwise of Philomena Byrne's allegations, but they are of such magnitude that those directly implicated should have been given the opportunity to put their case.
The picture painted of life in St Anne's is so unrelentingly appalling that in simple justice, opportunity should have been afforded the Sisters of Mercy to state their side of the story.
TV3 might well counter that two days before the broadcast they offered the Sisters of Mercy and the Diocese of Dublin slots of 90 seconds each after the programme in which a TV3 announcer would read a statement from them.
However, a statement read by a TV3 employee would have little impact against 48 minutes consisting mostly of close-ups of Philomena Byrne's tear-stained face.
The use of tight close-ups draws the viewer in. It is the most emotionally powerful of shots and was practically the only shot-size used right through this programme. It is visually overwhelming, but it is also a technique which can sideline rational judgment.
Section 9 of the Radio and Television Act requires that the broadcast treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current debate, is fair to all interests concerned and that the broadcast matter is presented in an objective and impartial manner.
Much television coverage of institutional abuse has not been objective. It has been advocacy television, where the directors feel so strongly about the subject they could be described as having a personal crusade on behalf of the victims. There is a place for advocacy television. An argument could be made that it was documentaries such as Dear Daughter and States of Fear, which many felt were not fair to religious orders, which forced the Government into establishing a commission to enquire into child abuse.
However, advocacy television should be advertised as such, with a public health warning as it were, that this is only one side of a story. It should be balanced by other programming.
We tend to believe in an almost naive fashion what we see. Studies have shown that faith in television news is greater than in print news because you see it happening. The impact of visuals is such that the public often forgets that media are a construction, the result of numerous editorial decisions to include or exclude material. For example, why was material from the many former residents who found life in the institutions reasonably good not included in the programme?
Since the visual is so powerful, polemical television must be flagged as such and if necessary, balance achieved outside the frame of a particular programme. For example, a programme could be broadcast but followed immediately by a studio discussion with the parties against whom the allegations were made. Or the religious order or the diocese could be offered facilities to produce their own video over which they have had complete editorial control.
One would have thought that the Nora Wall case would have altered the climate somewhat in Ireland. She was tried in an atmosphere of presumption of guilt on the part of religious orders, no matter how extraordinary the charges. The outcome was predictably appalling for her and for our justice system.
In a way it was understandable. So much denial had gone on of the horrors inflicted on certain children that there was a predictable swing of the pendulum where literally anything claimed about a nun, priest or brother would be believed.
But it is time to move on, to face the hard questions on how we balance the desperate need of certain people who were in institutions to be heard, with the rights of others to be innocent until adequate test has proven them guilty.
When we abandon the safeguards built in to civil society to protect the good name of individuals or institutions, at least until it is proven that they have forfeited their right to them, we go down a dangerous road.
It is particularly dangerous when television, with its powerful visual impact, becomes judge and jury. It makes for powerful viewing, it is good for ratings, but it is not justice.
bobrien@irish-times.ie