The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, is rightly worried about inaccurate reporting, writes Fintan O'Toole. As he said in a speech last May, "through misleading, false or intentionally inaccurate reporting, the press can remove from citizens the ability to form judgements for themselves".
He went on in that speech to quote Onora O'Neill - "democracy requires not merely that the media be free to express views but that they actually and accurately inform citizens". Mr McDowell added: "In any debate on media standards the primacy of truth and honesty must be asserted. It can be difficult for journalists to resist the variety of pressures - commercial, taste, ideology - they can come under or to resist the temptation to descend to abuse as opposed to valid criticism." In somewhat more abstruse mode, he claimed that "an act of communication must be intelligible, but . . . if it contains a truth claim, then it must be assessable by its audience. They must be able to fully test it". This is a serious issue, and Michael McDowell's views on the importance of truthful reporting in a democratic society are not merely academic. He is currently in the process of finalising a reform of the libel laws which will lead to the creation of a statutory Press Council to regulate standards and ensure good practice in the media. I'm with him all the way on that. I do, though, have one problem. What happens when the newspapers accurately report "misleading, false or intentionally inaccurate" statements by public figures. Like, for example, Michael McDowell himself.
Last Friday, the Minister gave a speech to the Institute of Chartered Surveyors. In it he attacked three named individuals who were not present: Father Seán Healy, Vincent Browne and myself. This is fine in itself - politicians have as much right to tear strips off their critics as their critics have to excoriate them. All anyone has a right to ask is what Michael McDowell asks of journalists - that statements which purport to be facts should indeed be factual.
In his speech, Michael McDowell indulged in much of the usual boilerplate rhetoric about the "left-wing chattering classes". He has obviously spotted a gap in the market for red-hunters and pinko-bashers since Charlie McCreevy moved on to better things. This is a bit of a disappointment coming from someone who can be a really fine rhetorician, but when you sound off as often as the Minister does, some decline in quality is inevitable. What concerns me, however, is that he made two specific claims of fact or, in his own formulation, acts of communication that contain a truth claim. One is that I am against private property and regard the Constitution as a right-wing document because it endorses the right to hold it. The other is that I believe that working to earn money is "somehow profane and beneath (my) moral radar". It would not be quite accurate to describe these statements as lies. A lie bears some relation to the truth, even if it is an inverse one. Michael McDowell's claims aren't even tenth cousins twice removed to the truth. They are pure inventions, conjured from thin air. As most readers might imagine, I both own property and work for money. I have never written anything that is remotely capable of being understood as a claim that working for a living is "profane". I have never attacked the constitutional guarantee of private property rights. The only view I've expressed on Article 43 is the same as that put forward by such known communists as Mr Justice Kenny, the heads of some of the building societies and the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution: that, in relation to building land, more emphasis needs to be placed on the second part of that article, which qualifies property rights by reference to social justice and the common good.
If I were to write nonsense here to the effect that Michael McDowell believed that taxpayers are suckers and the poor should be left to starve, he would, quite rightly, complain to my editors. They would ask me to provide the material on which I based my claims and if I couldn't do so, The Irish Times would apologise to the Minister. If and when the Press Council is established, it would properly admonish me for making things up and putting them in the paper. My professional reputation would be badly and deservedly damaged.
Applying the same standard, I asked Michael McDowell's office to tell me what writings of mine formed the basis of his claims about my views. The nearest I've got to a reply at the time of going to press is that the Minister wasn't thinking of anything I'd written but more about what I hadn't written. Apparently, he inferred my views from the fact that I haven't written often enough about the importance of private property. I will be interested to see if this is the test for truth and accuracy in the media that is to be applied by the Press Council or whether Michael McDowell sticks to what he has said before. Assuming he does, that would imply that he wishes to hold journalists to standards higher than those he applies to himself. Given the dim view he takes of left-wing commentators in The Irish Times, that implies a worrying degree of self-contempt.