Madam, - A few years ago, the American media got a lot of pleasure in castigating the New York Times for allowing a junior reporter to make up a few trivial stories. What was more interesting was that neither the NYT nor any other section of the American media saw any irony in their refusal to apologise for their far more important and systematic failure on the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
There is a parallel here. An untypical (and immediately corrected ) story about Liam Lawlor has seen the Irish media falling over themselves to apologise and to assure everyone that it will never happen again.
Meanwhile, not one Irish media outlet has thought it necessary to apologise to their paying customers for their systematic failure to expose the planning scandal, the beef scandal or the clerical sex scandal.
The media may plead fear of libel, but British television stations are subject to the laws and they felt able to expose the beef and clerical scandals, though they were of little interest to their audience.
Could we have an apology for systematic moral cowardice of the Irish media towards the rich and powerful? Surely the ordinary paying customer has rights too?
Are we all to pretend to believe that the main lesson of Liam Lawlor's life and death is that the Irish media are too hard on the establishment? - Yours, etc,
TIM O'HALLORAN, Ferndale Road, Dublin 11.