After reading story after story about ethically challenged reporters in the US, I was beginning to think that there is something uniquely amoral about the American press. However, hearing an Irish classmate speak about what is now being called the worst journalism scandal in Ireland's history, I've had second thoughts. The facts of the matter are now clear: Liam Lawlor, a politician and married father of three, was killed in a car accident in Moscow while accompanied by his 29-year-old Ukrainian translator. The Guardian's Observer, however, decided to run with another angle, entitling the article "Lawlor died in crash with call girl" and said:
"Disgraced politician Liam Lawlor, who died in a car crash in Russia yesterday morning, may have been travelling with a young prostitute it emerged last night..."
In retrospect, the papers -- led by the Guardian's Observer, but also picked up by six other papers -- got nearly every detail other than Lawlor's death wrong. Lawlor didn't stay at the hotel as the papers claimed he did, wasn't coming from the Red Light District, and, of course, wasn't in the company of a prostitute, teenager or otherwise.
How did such a supremely erred story get reported? Apparently, a reporter for the Observer spoke with an anonymous police officer on the scene who simply didn't have his facts correct and passed it on to the Independent, who ran it the next day as if it were true. Many of the ethical issues we've discussed in class this semester played a role in this disastrous situation -- the deadline pressure, the desire to be the first one to deliver the scoop and a focus on the salacious over the accurate.
As would be expected, the woman who accompanied Lawlor in the accident demanded and received public apologies and is considering legal action (though her chances at winning civil rewards are deemed slim). Less expected is that the case has rocked Ireland's society so much so that they're considering regulating their press through the implementation of a "press council," or, as Ireland's Minister for Justice put it, "an independent body composed of of persons representative of civic society, with minority representations from media interests and journalists" who would ensure "accurate and balanced" reporting.
Unfortunately, I don't see Ireland's solution of press regulation as the answer; seeing how difficult it is to identify "accurate and balanced" reporting, I can't only imagine how impossible a task it would be to regulate it. While I'm not nearly as pessimistic as Pat Leahy of Ireland's Sunday Business Post, his conclusion to a recent piece ("The Price of a Free Press") is haunting:
"...We may be well on the way to proving that the price of a free press is poor journalism."
willemmarx @ November 20, 2005 - 3:33pm
Ireland's "press regulation" would be very similar, I imagine, to the UK's Press Complaints Commission, which is not designed to in any way regulate the press, but rather as a legal forum for complaints against the press to be made and upheld. As the website you link to quotes the Irish Minister for Justice:
This refers nearly to the fact that there are legal strictures/parameters on the application of the "defamation" law in Ireland, which necessarily precludes (to my knowledge) any defamation of dead people from being upheld under current legislation. What the minister McDowell is suggesting is that a new provision be put in place which would allow not only those still alive who feel they have been defamed to launch legal action, but also those who feel slighted by defamation of a dead friend or relative, in this case Lawlor, to have a legal forum in which their reasonable complaints against the press, who may have allegedly misreported and "defamed" someone, can be considered.
On a separate note, though my knowledge of Irish media outlets is limited to my few trips to Dublin, I would like to say that none of those UK newspapers, excluding the weekly Observer (which deserves heavy criticism for what looks like a desire on the part of its newsdesk to run a overtly sensationalist story), are considered reputable or are, in my personal view, anything more than gossip rags.
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