It is remarkable that the controversy about the proposals by the Minister for Justice to curtail unauthorised communications between the media and members of An Garda Síochána is not being connected to the Hutton Inquiry now on in London, writes John Waters.
For the issues at play in Mr McDowell's efforts to curtail leaks of sensitive information are precisely those thrown up by the demise of Dr David Kelly.
Typically for matters affecting media interests, neither debate has exhibited much effort to look at the broader context - the balances required in a democratic society not just between public interest and individual privacy but between reasonable debate and necessary official secrecy.
It is no more than commonsensical of Mr McDowell to curtail the leaking of information, for reward or otherwise, pertaining to State security, or likely to jeopardise a trial, or of an unwarranted personal nature about the background of crimes.
It is obvious that, whereas his proposals may curtail publication of information of interest to the public, they are very much in the public interest.
Margaret Thatcher didn't say much that I endorsed unreservedly, but she said one thing that sticks in my memory long after I've forgotten the context. "When," she asked "are journalists going to join the human race?"
She was not suggesting that journalists are sub-human, but rather that we appear sometimes to subscribe to a notion of our professional rights and roles that places the publication of information above all other imperatives.
Any thoughtful journalist will admit there is no absolute right to publish, that decisions regarding the reach of the public interest are often finely balanced, and sometimes clear-cut in ruling out publication.
The trouble is that thoughtful journalism is increasingly rendered silent by the other kind. It has become a mantra of modern media that giving them unrestricted access and unlimited rights is in the best interests of democracy.
This self-serving cant amounts to no more than a withering fig-leaf to protect from scrutiny the excesses of media which, in many instances, are either out of control or in the control of malevolent and pitiless individuals who regard the pain and suffering of others as grist to their mills.
This threatens to destroy public trust in all journalism, but there is little commentary about it, because:
1. Media operate a virtual monopoly on collective conversation.
2. There is a climate of self-censorship within media which stifles principled dissent about the excesses of some elements.
3. Even ethical journalists have a kind of sneaking desire that the enlargement of journalistic powers achieved by less principled colleagues will benefit them also.
4. The banal notion that all disclosure is equally virtuous has becoming common currency within a profession that, increasingly, sees only the beams in the eyes of others.
Last week, journalists lined up to lament that Mr McDowell's proposals would bring an end to "whistle-blowing". Well, we were led to believe that Dr David Kelly was a whistle-blower, seeking to draw attention to the British government's abuse of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Alas for media grandiosity, it is already clear that Dr Kelly was no such thing, and that the piece of journalism that begat his destruction was a complete Horlicks.
As for the subsequent trail or events, including the exposure of Dr Kelly's identity and the subsequent pressures heaped upon him: the idea that these matters related most fundamentally to the culture of journalism is somehow elided in media coverage.
It was journalists who, in the final analysis, put Dr Kelly's name in the public domain, and who then besieged his home.
One newspaper, in an editorial last week, bemoaned the alleged neglect of Dr Kelly's welfare by the MoD: "A 10-minute warning to leave home because the massed ranks of the London press corps were on his trail hardly constituted support as the rest of us might expect it to be manifested". The "rest of us"?
Did the massed ranks of the London press corps have no responsibility to exercise restraint?
One certainty emerging from Hutton is that British media had neither regard for the welfare of their alleged whistle-blower when alive, nor for the ultimate truth about what may have precipitated his death.
Modern media harbour delusions of their moral purity in all matters, and so defend the actions of almost any journalist, regardless of fact, and their "right" to lay siege to whomever they please, regardless of circumstance.
But let us not forget that Lord Hutton, by establishing a website, has made every word of evidence available across the heads of vested interests, signalling that he is aware of the problem and intends to be bound by the facts.