Full Stop: When did we decide that we were no longer capable of forming our own opinions? When did we shift the responsibility of judging public figures on to paid writers? When did we grant the media the right to be judge, jury and executioner of those who have committed "crimes" in the public eye?

It's safe to assume that the rot had set in long before October 23rd, 2005. It was, however, on that Sunday that the extent of the disease became clear. The previous day, the news broke that Liam Lawlor, the former Fianna Fáil TD, had died in a car crash in Moscow. The Sunday Independent ran with the headline "Prostitute may have been in Lawlor's car at time of crash" (possibly not the exact words, but then the headline has been erased from the online records). The Star, commendably direct, offered the less confusing "Lawlor crash girl was HOOKER".

Of course, it soon came out that the woman in question was not a teenage prostitute but a 32-year-old interpreter who had worked with Lawlor for some time. The dismal process of apology and self-justification on the part of the papers in question began the next day. The obligatory they-should-be-ashamed calls to Liveline, on RTÉ Radio 1, gave the impression of a genuinely shocked media condemning the actions of the black sheep of the flock. What was most revealing about the whole sordid episode was the Irish Times obituary title, "Entrepreneur with a whiff of sulphur", published after the storm had broken.

This proved beyond doubt that the printed media as a whole did not see anything wrong with the style of journalism that produced the quoted headlines, only with the lack of factual evidence in this case.

There was no sense of decency or even common politeness in how the papers dealt with Lawlor - none of the respect for the dead that the man in the street, the man who buys these papers, holds so dear. This makes plain how far journalism has become removed from its readers, and how it has become corrupt and patronising. What should be the stuff of gossip and opinion columns now makes front-page news, and it is now considered obvious that every paper and television station has its own political agenda.

The media of today is a hopeless case. It needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, but this can only be achieved through a change in thinking first.

Hew Duffy, Full Stop, Wesley College, Dublin

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