David Palmer, of Independent Newspapers, said on Thursday that the verdict on Proinsias De Rossa's libel action against the Sunday Independent and Eamon Dunphy had profound implications for journalism in Ireland. Just what the jury's decision will mean, apart from the cost to the Independent group of around £1.5 million, depends to a great extent on what the group makes of it.
It can persist in the histrionics of yesterday's Irish In]dependent, which had a single line complaining of censorship where its editorial ought to be. Or it can follow the course suggested by the Independent's sister paper, the Star, and join a debate it has so far refused to take seriously.
The Star acknowledged the obvious significance for the newspaper industry of Mr De Rossa's £300,000 award but looked with a hint of optimism to the future: "New laws are needed," it said, not just to prevent the pursuance of doubtful claims but "to tidy up, modernise and equalise our existing laws. If that happens, it may well turn out not to have been such a tough day for newspapers after all."
If that happens things may, indeed, turn out for the best. It's a big If. On the day on which it complained of censorship, the Independent showed its indifference to public taste and journalistic standards by publishing the photograph of a murdered man, in spite of the pleas of his family.
Proinsias De Rossa won out because he is a resourceful and determined politician; the family of poor Nicholas McNulty is much, much more vulnerable. Before the Government can be expected to fulfill the PD's promise to review the libel laws - and before a distinctly sceptical public can be persuaded to support it - something else must happen. The industry, which includes managements as well as journalists, must show that it's willing to do more than shake its fist, stamp its feet and call for change on its own terms.
So far, many journalists - and the Independent group, in particular - have behaved as if what ought to be a debate about the role of the press, its rights and responsibilities, can be reduced to a series of irresistible demands under the banner Press Freedom.
It's a debate that must take account of the public's right to be informed and the journalist's role as a source of information. But it must also include the ownership and control of the press and the maintenance of journalistic standards.
But it can't be denied that, when it comes to their own industry, some of the most self-centred and demanding among us suddenly become defensive and taciturn. Others suspect that, somewhere, out there in the dark, lurks a public ready to take advantage of the slightest show of weakness.
Matt Cooper, of the Sunday Tribune, was among the first to warn, in the aftermath of the De Rossa-Dunphy-Independent case, that people would seize the opportunity to make money out of any slight. Someone else thought the public would come to see newspapers as a source of income, much as the fakers of accidents saw local authorities.
I doubt if the case which Mr Justice Paul Carney described as one of the hardest-fought in the history of jurisprudence will send people scurrying to their textbooks in the hope of a quick buck. As Mark Hennessy, of the Examiner, pointed out, Mr De Rossa risked bankruptcy and his Dail seat in a campaign that lasted 4 1/2 years and included three trials.
Matt Cooper spoke of very powerful figures who use the libel laws to inhibit newspapers and broadcasters going about their investigative business. This is true: the threat of libel is used at least as often as outright action. But the case for reform is not helped by displays of muscle put on from time to time by powerful newspaper groups.
In the De Rossa-Dunphy-Independent case, one jury was dismissed because of commentaries in the Sunday Independent, one of the defendants.
The attack on Mr De Rossa wasn't an isolated incident. While the Sunday Independent sailed close to the sun there were attacks on Dick Spring, Michael D. Higgins and others on the left of the centre-left government.
Now, it's sometimes suggested that the only issue to be considered in the dispute between Independent Newspapers and the left is whether the front-page editorial on the eve of poll had any impact on the result. That editorial was neither the first nor the only attack on the left to have been made by the O'Reilly papers. It was simply the most direct, the most clearly stated and the most prominently placed.
The attacks began when Democratic Left was considered a potential coalition partner, continued when Labour entered government with Fianna Fail and became more intense when Democratic Left joined Fine Gael and Labour in the tripartite coalition.
The editorial was the last rather than the first or only attack on the left in government. But it was in a sense more honest than some of the other commentaries: here at last was a plain statement of the interests represented by the Independent.
"For years we have been bled white - now it's payback time." The outgoing government did not propose an immediate reduction in the top rates of income tax; Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats did. Nothing could be clearer.
It's important to know where a newspaper stands. No one was ever in any doubt about the Press group. The Irish Press, Evening Press and Sunday Press weren't party papers - for most of its history the group was owned by the De Valera family. But it stood four square behind the party, not the family or its interests. In the case of the Independent group can we be so sure? The evidence to date is not encouraging.
In his Granta essay on Dr Tony O'Reilly, Fintan O'Toole recalled how, when the issue of the Sunday Tribune's editorial independence was under discussion, the Competition Authority was shown a quotation by Dr O'Reilly inspired by the Washington Post's style book.
In the statement, Dr O'Reilly, then a director of the Post, had said: "In a world where the ownership of newspapers is increasingly concentrated amongst a smaller group of names . . . the newspaper's duty is to its readers and to the public at large and not to the private interests of the owner."
Last week in a piece about Brendan O'Donnell, I wrote of the institutions through which he'd passed and of the contrasting, kinder ways of Father Joe Walsh and Imelda Riney.
A member of her family tells me that Ms Riney did not know Brendan O'Donnell and had not met him before her abduction. I accept that. The last thing I want to do is to add to the grief of Ms Riney's family.