`LEAKING is a bit like bomb manufacturing. It can blow up in your face." So writes former government press secretary, Sean Duignan, in Media in Ireland: the Search for Ethical Journalism, a collection of eight papers delivered at the Cleraun Media Conference in Dublin last February, edited by Damien Kiberd and launched last week. What's more, he says, the vast majority of leaks don't achieve their objective. Duignan cites the botched attempt to damage the President, Mrs McAleese, during her campaign two years ago by the leaking of a conversation on the North she had with a Foreign Affairs official.
But he rather liked being called a spin-doctor. "It conveyed an aura of being in control, pulling the strings, of being a cunning manipulator of media opinion, etc, instead of the reality, which was being confused, often panic-stricken, most of the time."
He regrets that Labour activists were better practitioners - and while the leaking couldn't be proved, it made the Albert Reynolds government, in which he served, paranoid. But while he warns politicians against thinking a hot piece of information entitles one to the everlasting gratitude of the journalist, he has a theory - "One just does it, then denies it - certainly never admits it - irrespective of speculation, accusation or even verification."