It is far from implausible to suggest that if Michael McDowell's proposed privacy legislation had been in place at the time of the Abbeylara siege, John Carthy might still be alive. There were, of course, many aspects of the Garda handling of the affair that were negligent, incompetent and even reckless, writes John Waters
But a key element of the denouement, when Carthy emerged armed from the house and began to walk towards gardaí, was a report a short time before on RTÉ's Five Seven Live programme, which for the first time gave Carthy's name and revealed details of his recent split-up with a girlfriend.
In his report on the episode published last week, Mr Justice Barr criticised the RTÉ report and the reporter, Niall O'Flynn.
Acknowledging that it probably caused John Carthy "substantial distress", the judge stopped short of inferring a direct connection between the report and the catastrophic ending of the siege, but noted pointedly that it was "irresponsible and should not have happened".
The main source of the judge's disapprobation appears to be that the report was broadcast without regard for the fact that John Carthy was suffering from depression. He described as "not credible" the claim by the RTÉ reporter that he had been unaware of this factor.
"Mr O'Flynn's conduct," declared Mr Justice Barr, "seems to indicate the likelihood of a desire on his part to steal a march on his news colleagues in RTÉ and the media generally by titillating his Five Seven Live audience with some details of John Carthy's recent unhappy love life, and to suggest that a lost intimate relationship might be involved."
This functions not only as a summary of what happened in Abbeylara but as a description of media culture generally.
Many journalists themselves despise this culture of competition- driven intrusion, but are powerless to do anything about it. And despite the media's all but unanimous repudiation of the proposed privacy legislation, many journalists would secretly welcome a law that made it impossible for editors to compel them to cross the line into the private realm.
Because the media do not merely utilise and manipulate events as they happen, but also control subsequent discussions about the meanings of events, the significance of the Five Seven Live report has not been unduly emphasised in the reporting of Mr Justice Barr's findings. This is typical of the way the media take advantage of their stewardship of public discussion to protect their own interests.
Because media have a dual function as commercial operations and conduits for information and discussion pertaining to democracy, media advocates have means, motive and opportunity to create in the public mind a confusing conflation between these functions. This they do with great assiduity, presenting themselves as selfless and uncomplicated carriers of essential information, and disingenuously treating all information as of equal value. It has been a central element of the entirely one-sided media presentation of the continuing argument about privacy that media exist as a bulwark of democracy, to tell the public what it has a "right" to know.
There is a profound distinction to be made between the public's "right to know" in relation to matters pertaining to democracy and the publication of information for the purpose of public titillation. In the Abbeylara context, undoubtedly, there is now a public "right to know" the detail of what happened. But this "right" did not exist from the beginning and arises now only as a result of the tragic outcome, to which the publication of personal information about John Carty undoubtedly contributed.
The Five Seven Live report did not serve democracy nor, despite the undoubted titillation it provided to the drive-time audience on April 20th, 2000, did it serve the public interest. Only because of the extreme circumstances can we see this clearly, but what is true here is often true of less fraught episodes as well.
Abbeylara, then, offers a clear if extreme insight into the effects of a media free-for-all in relation to the private lives of individuals. Not all cases of such intrusion prove fatal, but many people who have done no wrong of which the public has any right to be aware find themselves laid siege to and "substantially distressed" by media scrutinising of their private lives.
It is not necessary to be depressed to become traumatised by an invasion of one's privacy perpetrated for no better reason than the commercial exploitation of public curiosity.
This brings us back to the issue of Garda recklessness. There was a time when an episode such as occurred in Abbeylara would have been handled by the local sergeant arriving at John Carthy's house with his hat off and a box of cigarettes in his hand. Within a short time of its commencement, the Abbeylara siege resembled an episode of The Bill, with a very definite sense that the primary objective of the operation was to satisfy the "public interest" - in the sense of public curiosity. In this and in the narrower sense relating to the Five Seven Live report, you might say that what killed John Carthy was a misplaced sense of the public interest.