Tougher rules on media holdings urged
The Former PD leader said a danger to democracy had arisen because of newspaper and broadcast ownership being in the hands of a few “powerful people”.
The former attorney general said it was lax of the Coalition to back away from introducing curbs on media ownership.
“Looking at it from the outside, there’s an awful lot of talking up what the Government are about to do — and then, suddenly, we can’t do it. If you want to run a newspaper, don’t run a radio station. I don’t see there is anything wrong with that.
“In the context of newspapers, either you can be a trust like The Irish Times, or no group can have more than a 25% interest in any newspaper.
“Those are the kinds of things you could be doing if you were really concerned with keeping the organs of public expression free, and I think they are under threat,” Mr McDowell told RTÉ.
The comments came as Alan Shatter, the justice minister, indicated that he favoured bringing in privacy laws.
“There is within certain sections of the media an ethos that I don’t think can be addressed through the Press Council. It’s also interesting the way decisions of the Press Council are actually reported.
“They can hide criticism in different parts of the paper than the original story, so I think there are issues around this,” he told The Sunday Times.
