Mr. Harry Browne:

No, Senator O'Keeffe is understanding my distinction. What I am saying is that even in those areas where one was not under the same direct commercial pressures or there was not the same expectation, for instance as there would be if one was being profiled in the business supplement of a major Irish newspaper, one can usually be pretty sure that it will be a nice, soft piece. That was certainly true, but probably a little less true since the collapse. Maybe we will get to that. It was certainly true during the time of the Celtic tiger.

What I am saying is that in addition to there being areas of the paper that did not come under the same sorts of commercial pressures, the people who worked in those areas none the less would get the message that those commercial sections put out. We may talk a little bit about how much money those sections were actually worth, but they were very significant. We were told repeatedly that those sections paid the bills in a newspaper.

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One comes to understand that it is where interests lie. That is not to say, of course, that political journalism is somehow immune to the same kind of source relationships and sensitivities that business or property journalism has. I do not want to come to Leinster House and pretend it is a big revelation that sometimes journalists are given a story in exchange for soft coverage. It is something I bet happens around here sometimes. That is the distinction I was making.