Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I accept that is a point. I acknowledge that people who are critical of the media should always remember that spin and leaks are the other side of the coin. Senator Mansergh put this point more pithily than I but I accept that proposition.

I said earlier that one must be robust with the media. The media are better at giving it than taking it. They order ink by the barrel-load and those who take them on do so at their peril. If one criticises the media, the jaded cliché that one is killing the messenger will be flung back at one. Until this debate was launched there had not been a significant debate on this issue. One of the advantages of the current debate, in this House and in other places, is that some journalists are beginning to accept that there is a standards issue, others are beginning to accept that there is a control issue and others are asking how toothless a press council would be without a statutory basis. People are beginning to distinguish between a Government appointed press council on the one hand, which the advisory group suggested, and a more organic model, which would be more independent of Government, on the other. The Broadcasting Complaints Commission operates in the context of a licensed media and might not be a perfect model for a press council.

Journalism is the lifeblood of our democracy but campaigning journalism can sometimes become self-indulgent, as I have found out to my cost. I have had the experience of being so heavily attacked that I felt as if I had been to a cocktail party and had a drunk vomit all over me. It was very unpleasant to be on the receiving end but I knew that in the fullness of time, the perpetrator would be more ashamed when he looked back over what he had written than I would be. It was, nonetheless, unpleasant at the time.

There are some current issues which newspapers could tackle. One newspaper has an errors and corrections section. It is in very small print but it is a step forward. In all my years' practice of libel law I never saw a newspaper willing to be fair with an apology. They always wanted to minimise it, reduce it, take any sense of belief out of it and to make it as gnarled and as unpleasant for the plaintiff as possible.