David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who, as usual, has been a refreshing presence in the House. He made a remarkably interesting and professional contribution in which he cited a number of case precedents and legal arguments of a refined and, to some, almost arcane nature. Certainly, he addressed the principal features of the subject under discussion. I will comment first on the Minister's speech before moving to a few points of my own.

The Minister referred to Mr. Justice White's decision, which I also noted. While I respect the fact that one must be careful in discussing it as there may be subsequent cases in the offing, there is a certain area in which comment can be made. I disagree with the Minister's view that the fine imposed on the Irish edition of The Sun of €100,000 was substantial. It was a fleabite. The Sun has a record in this area. It manufactured completely false stories about Elton John and published them with the result that its circulation increased. That probably allowed it to cover the cost of the libel case and the £1 million sterling fine imposed.

I am not xenophobic. While my father was English and I could hardly be described as being anti-British or anti-English, there is no doubt that this country now has what the Minister referred to as the "British disease". I recently listened to Mr. Seamus Dooley who is an excellent man, former journalist and secretary of the National Union of Journalists, which has good standards. He said the reason the material in the case referred to above appeared in the Irish edition of The Sun was that it was sub-edited in London. That fact is a clear indication of the malign intervention of British newspapers and their lack of standards in this country.

The Minister mentioned professor Roy Greenslade, a very distinguished and eminent commentator. I read the article by the professor which appeared in The Sunday Business Post. We should take heed of his comments. While Senator Walsh was correct to say earlier that we have good journalists with sound standards, we must ask about the nature of Irish newspapers and the manner in which their standards are being affected by the penetration of the market by the British media. According to Professor Greenslade's opening shot, Dublin newspapers are now employing the sordid tricks of a trade pioneered so cynically by London tabloids. The professor considered in his article the idea of a press council, in which context I disagree with the Minister who made sound arguments against self-regulation before appearing to support the idea.

Self-regulation is no regulation. There are very good reasons all media have attacked every single profession including the Minister's own in this regard. If it has been deemed inappropriate for doctors and lawyers to regulate themselves, I wonder why it is appropriate for the media. One requires a clear demonstration of why a principle does not apply in a particular case if it applies everywhere else and the newspapers have failed to make their case satisfactorily. According to Professor Greenslade, although constrained to an extent by an ethical code drawn up by editors in 1991, newspapers have found ways to circumvent and flout it. He said that sadly the Press Complaints Commission, the machinery of voluntary, self-regulation erected to police the code, had tended to allow newspapers far too much licence. That is the English experience of self-regulation. The professor concludes by saying the failure to deal with tabloid scurrility in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s created a culture in which a generation of journalists and editors came to believe they could do as they liked. Their subsequent clean-up act has been a mask for further misconduct. The professor begs Ireland not to allow its newspapers to make the same mistake.

I remember reading and thinking silly some words of Arthur Cleary, a contemporary of James Joyce at UCD. Mr. Cleary, who had a way with a phrase, said a country which took an English newspaper for its Sunday breakfast might one day find a change in its Friday menu. I am old enough, as perhaps is the Minister, to realise that his reference was to Friday being the day on which one ate fish. While I thought the statement to be silly and parochial when I read it, it is unfortunately proving to be true. There is one newspaper of particular note in this context although I should not, perhaps, give it the credit or the blame given the manner in which it feeds on infamy. Every newspaper which has written about this matter has pointed its finger at Ireland on Sunday and there is no doubt that it is the source of this culture.

I had my experience with Ireland on Sunday when an interview I did with it was seriously and deliberately misinterpreted. I was given the entire front page of the newspaper which featured a photograph that made me look like a raging sex maniac. All kinds of distortions appeared. I was not expecting it. I remember the appalling personal pain I felt when I stopped at a petrol station while driving to Limerick and saw serried ranks of this mischievous edition. These people have no conscience and do not realise the pain they cause. Luckily, I got over it having gone on air to defend myself. I thank those other members of the media, including print media, who gave me the opportunity to explain what I had to say. The subject of the interview was human sexuality, the age of consent, paedophilia and pederasty, but subtle distinctions were deliberately obscured.

The result of such activity is that very serious matters of public import are made so dangerous that public figures are afraid to open their mouths about them. They will be trivialised and trashed by rubbishy, third-rate, sensational journalism. This is what my late friend the wonderful television dramatist, Denis Potter, meant when he accused Rupert Murdoch, of whom, as the genealogists say, more anon, of debasing public discourse in Britain. This is why it is dangerous to allow these people to get away with the behaviour outlined. They will continue to do so if they are not regulated by a system which includes sanctions. It is extremely important therefore to include such sanctions in any mechanism we develop to address this matter.

The Naomi Campbell case involved the question of whether a public interest existed. While this unfortunate woman is a celebrity, a very beautiful fashion model known by everyone, she was struggling with addiction. Is she not entitled in her desperation to seek assistance without her treatment being interrupted and damaged in the interests of profit by unscrupulous newspapers? I do not object to the making of profits by newspapers — that is the world in which we live. To make a profit by exploiting the misery of others while exposing them, as in the case of Naomi Campbell, to the risk of relapse into serious addiction, however, is disgusting and immoral. What makes it worse is the pious, holier-than-thou tripe the people involved go on with. The media argued in the case of Princess Caroline that she was a "figure of contemporary society par excellence" which meant there was a public interest in photographing her buying a half dozen eggs. I disagree that there is any interest in it at all. I am very glad the European Court of Human Rights rejected the media's argument and found that no public interest had been served.

In a very carefully balanced contribution, the Minister said the courts were the appropriate venue in which to deal with this subject on a case-by-case basis. I take a slightly different view of where the balance is achieved. The Minister's argument is a demonstration of his intellectualism. While I can see that intellectually such a case can be made, I ask the Minister to consider the pain of those individuals who are forced by the absence of statutory protection to drag themselves through the courts with the attendant risks and expense such a process entails. Very often people will be advised by very good libel lawyers that while there is no doubt they have been libelled, they are not advised to proceed with a case due to the risks involved. If one loses a libel case, one has not only been damaged but financially ruined. It is not fair to expect individual, ordinary members of the public to pay with their blood, sweat and money to provide a track record of case precedents. It is a great pity.

The Minister said the Government of the United Kingdom had declined to follow the recommendations, as he has himself, of a statutory independent review. I wonder why Mr. Blair has taken this line. I will put my suspicions on the record. Before he was elected to the position of Prime Minister, Mr. Anthony Blair flew to Australia and had a meeting with Rupert Murdoch. As a result, the tone of the Murdoch chain of newspapers changed drastically and the newspapers assisted him to get into power. I have no doubt whatever that there is a Faustian pact between New Labour and Mr. Rupert Murdoch, which has not done British public life any good at all.

The Minister referred to the pamphlet by Baroness O'Neill, about which I did not know, but I certainly will get a copy of it as it sounds interesting. She makes the point that much of this journalism is "invasive, intrusive, does nothing to further the role of a free press in society, does not lead or shape political discourse on the issues of the day, rather it is sleazy and intended to make profit". The Minister then went on to the question of a statutory or Government-appointed press council. I would have a problem with Government appointments because there is the difficulty of perceived political interest. It is difficult to work out how to arrive at a press council. It should be independent and statutory but I wonder about the method of appointment.

The Minister also referred to the question of the need for the council to be representative in nature and the question of funding. It should be funded by the Exchequer, not the press, because there must be no suggestion of influence. The Minister stated subscription to the press council and adherence to its code of standards by a publication would strengthen its entitlement to avail equally of the defence of reasonable publication in a court action. That is fine but what about publications that do not do so? The Minister has indicated clearly there is a possibility of people opting out. What happens to them? There is no reason people should opt out. What sanctions are there against these people if they do so? This is pretty toothless. The Minister stated the code of standards is not an issue for him or the Government. While it is not a matter for them exclusively, the Minister, the Government and the Oireachtas should have an input into what are the standards on behalf of the people.

It is a pity to concentrate on one newspaper but it has brought this upon itself. Fintan O'Toole wrote an interesting analysis in The Irish Times on 5 February. He examined the contents of the previous week's Ireland on Sunday. He catalogued and analysed the various stories, including the story about Charlie Bird. Most offensively, there was a frightful and utterly unjustifiable story about Malcolm MacArthur's son. This is an innocent young man who has tried to make the best of a life that cannot have been easy and who is studying for an advanced degree in Trinity College. All he has done is be the son of somebody who became infamous. He is exposed and photographed and there is innuendo in comments such as the Wildean hairdo and the dandyish look. It is being suggested that this makes him a clone of his father. The newspaper is visiting the sins of the father upon the son.

Where is the public interest? How dare the newspaper behave in this way? If it does so in Britain, it should be clearly told it cannot and must not do it with impunity in this country. Imagine the pain of that man but I hope and expect he has the courage to continue his studies. He did not deserve this and it is an absolute disgrace on the part of the journalists who wrote the article. I do not read this newspaper but I am not sure whether this was one of the columns, which the Minister rightly referred to with indignation, with a bogus byline. They are ashamed to put their own names to it. That is an outrageous practice.

There was an article on the family of the former Minister, Ray Burke. What did they do? Where is the public interest? According to Fintan O'Toole:

Thus, in the first 22 pages of this one issue of Ireland on Sunday, there were photographs of people going about their private lives. All of them were clearly taken without the consent of the subjects. None of them, or the stories that accompanied them, gave readers any new information at all on any public issue.

In addition, a girlfriend of somebody famous ran away and tried to shield her face but the newspaper made a point of her distress. This is prurience to the point of press pornography.

We have a good press, which has a good union. Seamus Dooley has done us great credit in the way he responded honourably and outlined the standards which, unfortunately, are not adhered to by British newspapers, in particular. British standards are being adopted here and they are simply not acceptable.

I will not go into all the stuff about Kevin Myers but even in The Irish Times, which is an exceptionally fine newspaper, there are practices that lead to the ordinary individual suffering a little. I have been involved in controversy and I have written to the newspaper commenting on columns that appeared. I have been replied to not in the letters page but in these very columns. I have had entire columns devoted to me by Mark Steyn, Kevin Myers and John Waters, which is very flattering but there is an imbalance. It is not too much to ask newspaper columnists to demean themselves to join the hoi polloi in the letters page rather than using the added weight of their columns to extinguish ignorant people.

Charlie Bird rang Ireland on Sunday and complained to the editor. I know a little about this because I spoke to people within the trade when I was blackguarded by that newspaper. The newspaper brought in a new person from England with a brutish reputation as editor and got rid of all the NUJ members and, therefore, the code of practice does not exist. However, when Charlie Bird contacted the newspaper, he was told he was "fair game" and "a legitimate target". I would like to say to that Englishman editing that newspaper that we do not associate that language with a decent press in Ireland. We associate that language with the Provisional IRA, which undemocratically takes upon itself to describe and label people as "legitimate targets" and "fair game". It is not his business to do it and we will not stick with it.