So, Fine Gael and Fianna Fβil are making belated shapes to reform libel law. Good, although it's not before time. Our libel laws are anachronistic, hinder journalism and favour wealthy people. Yet libel law is just part, albeit a particularly contentious part, of a context which neither political party dares address. "You must," said the Association of European Journalists six years ago, "distinguish between the function of journalism and the business of the media." To make sense of journalism within a media "industry", indeed you must.
Therefore, while reform of libel law is pressing and necessary, measures to curtail concentration of press ownership should remain the major priority. Some hope! Clearly, Tony O'Reilly is, by far, the dominant proprietor in Ireland's press industry. Independent News & Media-controlled newspapers account for almost 80 per cent of Irish national newspaper circulation in the Republic - almost 60 per cent, if imported titles are included. The group is also the largest publisher of regional titles in Ireland. In "industry" terms, this is impressive.
It's good business, but such a cornering of the market cannot but hinder democracy. The pretence that the legitimate goal of business - to turn a profit - and the (at least) theoretical cardinal goal of journalism - to tell the truth, as best as it can be ascertained - are synonymous, is sheer hypocrisy. It's not that anybody should be sanctimonious about O'Reilly's dominance. After all, if his company wasn't so commanding in the Irish market, someone else's could be. It's the fact of allowing any single outfit such concentration of ownership that undermines the contribution of journalism to democracy.
Mind you, you're not supposed to say that. Certainly, if you were a politician, raising such a fundamental if uncomfortable truth about Ireland's press "industry" might not be the wisest career move.
Consequently, few do. Control the industry and you can - never totally, of course, but disproportionately - control its content. Anyway, the split between the function of journalism and the press as an industry is evident in Fine Gael's policy document on libel law reform, 'Press for Change'. In this regard, Fianna Fβil's will be scarcely any different.
Among Fine Gael's proposals is that newspaper publishers and editors should appoint a Media Complaints Commission, with a majority of its membership independent of the companies concerned. However, such a commission unashamedly favours the business aspect of journalism. The journalists' union, the NUJ, would have no guaranteed place on it. For obvious reasons, employers do not want the NUJ represented. So, power within Irish journalism may become even more concentrated in the name of expanding democracy.
That's some trick. Already, journalism in Ireland, like journalism in Britain, is very hierarchical. Sure, there are some valid reasons for this, primary among which is the fact that decisions must be taken against punishing deadlines. It's in the nature of the business/service that there's seldom time for extended deliberation. None the less, the hierarchical structures of media outfits do seem grossly ironic whenever the media stresses its importance in sustaining and nurturing democracy - charity beginning at home and all that.
Individuals and organisations with power do not welcome vigorous investigative journalism by a free press. Why would they? As powerful individuals, usually belonging to even more powerful parties, politicians have an obvious interest in maintaining laws which suit them. Certainly, there are exceptions and, as Fine Gael stresses, reform of the libel laws should be seen in the context of "the era of tribunals". Fair enough.
Politically, words such as "accountability" and "transparency" are positively charged nowadays.
But the implications of thorough "accountability" and "transparency" are not favoured by most powerful people. In any power struggle, people are naturally unwilling to cede advantages which, either in actuality or in potential, help to maintain their privileges. As a result, the quality control of the press - when, as in Ireland, it's rooted so overwhelmingly in market economics and law - inevitably panders to business and political and legal power. Ultimately, of course, these cannot be totally satisfactory mechanisms for quality control. In matters of morality, they can be only parts of a greater whole.
Consider, for instance, how the press routinely acts with questionable morality without incurring the censure of the law. Lies, inaccuracy, distortions, bias, propaganda, favouritism, sensationalism, trivialisation, lapses of taste, vulgarity, sleaze, sexism, racism, homophobia, personal attacks, smears, character-assassination, deception, betrayal of confidences, dodgy cheque-book journalism, invasions of privacy - all of these and more can be found in Ireland's press, albeit less wantonly and savagely than in Britain's.
Occasionally, the law penalises papers for the kind of transgressions listed above. Usually it doesn't. The simple truth is that, in matters of morality, the individual ethics of publishers, editors and journalists are the key to quality control, just as their individual beliefs are the key to the ideologies of their publications. But sensationalism, sleaze, smears and all the rest make money. They are lucrative devices in fulfilling the business function of media outfits - to turn a profit. For all the cant about "giving the people what they demand", the fundamental aim is to make loot for the proprietor and the shareholders.
The idea that there might be moral obligations on the media is easily and readily mocked. The financial beneficiaries of such mockery will expect to be treated ethically if they visit a doctor or a lawyer or a Garda station, say. Indeed, many such beneficiaries will believe they have a duty to expose rogue doctors, lawyers and coppers. But the same stringency is generally not applied to the source of their own wealth. It's "realism", you see - no profits, no paper. If X can't grab the market, Y, using whatever it takes, will.
Within the media "industry", such market logic makes sense. But it is a limited logic. Would the "realists", who make the most money from dubious "journalism", be happy to see themselves or their relations subjected to any of the questionable circulation and profit-boosting devices? Or is it simply prissy, priggish and po-faced to ask that? The notion of ethics in journalism is often laughable, not only to the public, but to many journalists who see the writing on the cheques for sensationalising trivia.
(Mind you, the notion of ethics in any institution of Irish life is easily ridiculed. The press, because its transgressions are so public, is easily vilified.)
Anyway, the upshot of attempts to control quality primarily through law is that ethics are routinely dismissed as effete, sanctimonious and, most crucially, profit-hindering nonsense. Let's be blunt about this: if there's a market for rubbish, then rubbish, trivial and toxic, will be sold. Selling people what you would sneer at yourself - and many of the "realists" sneer, all right - is commercially laudable, but it is inimical to decent journalism.
It's the demands of the market, not simply the strictures of the law, which need to be tackled.
It would be absurd to pretend that there are easy answers. Yet, it's equally absurd to pretend that nothing can be done, that market "realism" - accorded the status of an article of faith in Ireland now - must not be questioned. By all means, let us have reform of libel law. Fine Gael's document, even if opportunist and politically-motivated (they are, after all, a political party!) is at least a tiny step in the right direction, even though their idea of a 'Privacy Bill' is especially alarming.
But media education, especially in secondary schools, is necessary. "I'm fed up with graduates who know about media policies in Zimbabwe but who can't spell 'Zimbabwe'," a newspaper executive told me recently. It's a clever, if unsurprising, line. He was looking for competent sub-editors, of which the "industry" reports a scarcity. But media education must be about more than training functionaries to enter the "industry". Such training, though necessary for aspiring journalists, is not required by the public.
Instead, readers can be best served by understanding the forces and the interaction of such forces which shape journalism. Crucial among these forces are the law and the market; and, indeed, there is a relationship between these. The fact that many people cannot risk libel actions because of the potential cost of engaging the services of the law makes the point.
But students in secondary school - many of them sharp enough to fathom the intricacies of integral calculus and irregular French verbs - are not encouraged to understand the forces shaping the media which, in turn, profoundly shape their own outlooks on a vast range of issues.
Of course, the second-level curriculum is legal. You'd have to wonder, however, how moral it is. Journalism is not a body of knowledge such as, say, engineering. It has core principles but really is more of a process. Part of that process, unfortunately, seems to be a deliberate obscuring of the differences between the function of journalism and the business of the media. OK, in a market economy, the two are inextricably linked and libel reform is overdue. But education to help people see the legitimate profit motive, as well as the law itself, in proportion to the ideal of democracy, is what Irish journalism most needs now. Just don't wait up.