Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second Senator Crown's amendment to the Order of Business.
People in our business are advised not to question the media because it is akin to putting one's head in the lion's mouth and the media, of its very nature, will always have the last word. I ask for a debate on the online newspaper business, in particular, the manner in which online newspapers provide a facility for nameless, anonymous commentators to be very critical and sometimes quite abusive of politicians in general. We read many of these newspapers, the best-known being thejournal.ie, which I read regularly. It provides a very good service which is informative, interesting and has some very good articles by the main contributors. However, it also allows a facility for nameless, anonymous individuals to comment freely from the safety of total anonymity on not only politicians but on people in general. In my view there should be some form of registration and identification expected from people who want to contribute in this way. Print newspapers are quite happy to print letters from the public and this is to be welcomed by us all but no respectable newspaper will allow a letter to be printed which is critical of any politician or anybody else, unless that person provides a name and address. This is as it should be. However, I refer to these kind of anorak bloggers who appear all over the place on whatever is the issue of the day and sometimes their comments can verge on the abusive in their language and personal criticism of people's appearance and so on. I ask for a debate on this issue and I would like to have the publications in question participating in that debate and outlining their view as to the future of that type of anonymous commentary they seem to be facilitating.