Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael)

"Standards" is a word we use daily, whether it relates to the standard of debate in this House, the standard of service we as elected representatives get from Departments or the standards that the public rightly expect of us.

Oireachtas committees monitor how we behave, for example, the Committee on Members' Interests of Seanad Éireann, which was established under the Ethics in Public Office Act. It is right and fitting that we have standards, but they must be of the highest level. If we allow them to slip, we open ourselves up to debate and scrutiny in terms of why this House should exist. I do not need to remind Members of either House of several examples of what the late Garret FitzGerald called low standards in high places. It must be exposed every time it occurs.

The chief investigators into such happenings are the media. The fourth estate is recognised as the press or media in its various elements. It can constitute photographs, journalism, television or radio. It wields immense power in our everyday lives. It influences what we think, what we consume, where we live and how we interact with everyone else.

With this power comes responsibility and the media must follow standards. They must be kept high. In fairness, this is the case in Ireland. This is achieved through regulation by the Office of the Press Ombudsman, the Press Council and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. We have codes of practice for newspapers and magazines, but we also have a sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Who decides the standards that the media follows? Is it the media barons, for example, Rupert Murdoch and his stable of media outlets, be it Fox News, Sky or TheSun? Do they influence what commentary appears in the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail or The Irish Times, what story will be covered on radio or how discussions will be handled on television? We have seen how Mr. Murdoch's media empire operated in the UK, in that it may have made inappropriate payments. The independent Press Complaints Commission is investigating the matter now. We would not want the same situation to develop in Ireland, but who knows what is occurring at this minute?

There are those in the media who will look on any review or oversight as interference and as a way for politicians to muzzle or bash the media. I am not here to bash anyone but I will speak out if anything has been wrongly treated in the media. No one is above the law or criticism. We must be honest with ourselves when problems need to be examined and solutions found.

What has happened to require us to discuss standards in the media? The advent of the Internet has changed the ways in which and how quickly events and stories are covered. A tsunami hits the coast of Japan and, in minutes, a live feed from the disaster zone has been uploaded from a mobile telephone and is being relayed via Twitter, Youtube or Skype. This is great, but it can also pose risks. A story can appear on the wires and, before it can be verified, it can be on blogs, online newspapers and online television.

The media is under pressure, as we the public have been insatiable in our hunger for the latest news. We want it now and we want it delivered to us almost before it happens. We want it to be racy and fast. Due to the migration to online content and the loss of advertising, financial pressures are dumped on the media, which can result in cutbacks in pay, the quality of programming and the time spent doing proper checks of the veracity of a story's content. This leads to slipshod journalism and we run the risk of our current affairs programmes getting issues wrong and ending up in court. There have been classic examples of this lately, with unprofessionalism leading to large pay-outs to victims. The media needs standards to be maintained at the highest level. We do not want to see anyone crucified on page 1 and apologised to the following week on page 15.

During the era of the Celtic tiger a week did not pass without a large glossy feature in every newspaper promoting this or that development. We seemed to gloat in the way that property prices kept increasing. There were stories of people camping outside estate agents overnight so that they could be in with a chance of getting houses in phase 1 of developments, knowing that the same houses and flats in phase 2 would be €20,000 more expensive. Revenues from advertising went though the roof and the party was in full swing. Taxes were flowing in and a number of individuals in the media who stated that it was all madness and would not last were dismissed as party poopers or merchants of doom. When the penny finally dropped with the former Government and it realised that the situation could not last forever, we were told through the media that we would have a soft landing. If this has been a soft landing, I would hate to see a hard one.

We have gone to the other extreme, in that everything is doom and gloom morning, noon and night. I am constantly being told by constituents that they no longer want to listen to talk radio or the news or read a newspaper. Is it any wonder that so many people know how the latest act is doing on "X Factor" or "America's Got Talent" but no one who is asked can recall a good news story? The media is a force for good and needs to bear good news. There are good stories and people want to hear about them. I am not saying that the media should not question, probe and investigate, but I hope that the pendulum will swing back towards the middle and that a bit of common sense and high standards will prevail again.