Journalists are quick to condemn all shortcomings but their own

A RECENT Prime Time survey on the Church threw up an interesting but largely unreported statistic: compared to 90% of people who saw the role of doctors as very important, only 22% of people gave this rating to politicians, and journalists got a mere 20%.

Wasn't that ironic? Journalists are the scourge of every institution these days. They feed us all the bad news: Liam Lawlor's deals, Denis O'Brien's complicated tax-life, gardaí mauling innocent protesters and politicians' pay hikes. We had GV Wright's victim on the news almost as soon as she was run over. Why, after all that public service, are the whistle-blowers reviled even more than some of the supposed wrongdoers? Maybe it's because there is something terribly arbitrary about the way the media switches its attention from one institution to another as it exposes scandal. And the bizarre fact that journalists rarely shine a light on their own operation.

Last week I came across a neat bit of ass-covering by journalists whose salaries my taxes are helping to pay. RTÉ Radio's Liveline ran an item about a woman called Margaret, a former resident of a Magdalen laundry, who died in July this year. On Tuesday Joe Duffy spoke to former residents of the laundry who laid into the nuns for their callousness in not informing Margaret's family about her death. Unfortunately, running this item had the effect of revealing Margaret's identity, including personal details about her life which, when she was alive, she was anxious to keep confidential.

If the first casualty of the Liveline programme was Margaret's privacy, the second was the truth. Neither Joe Duffy nor the programme's producers seemed to care about the inaccuracy of what some of their interviewees were saying. Like, for example, the claim that the nuns had buried Margaret without ceremony and had made no attempt to contact her family.

This wasn't true. The nuns had regular contact with Margaret's brother, with whom they dealt as next-of-kin. They produced a booklet for the funeral, arranged singing as part of a concelebrated mass and arranged refreshments after the interment. The nursing home chaplain who knew Margaret spoke about her during the mass despite one caller saying that nothing had been said. In short, the nuns did everything you would expect a loving family to do. They had also tried to contact one of Margaret's twin daughters at the only contact number and address available to them.

In pursuing this avenue they enlisted the help of the gardaí in Lucan and published Margaret's death notice in the newspaper.

RTÉ didn't know any of this because they didn't bother to clarify with the Sisters before the programme. Unless, that is, you count a lunchtime phone-call, 45 minutes before they went on air, as sufficient effort at clarification. Liveline only got through to one of the nuns' housekeepers when they called at 1pm. I can't say whether the Sisters would have participated and clarified matters the reality is they were not even given an option. But one thing is for sure: RTÉ did not postpone the item so that they could separate the true claims from the false.

On Wednesday, things got worse. Liveline interviewed one of Margaret's daughters, and her adoptive father, both of whom were critical of the nuns for making no effort at contact. Still no effort by RTÉ to put the record straight. One of the nuns was contacted only after a letter was sent to Joe Duffy and the director general at RTÉ.

In fact, Liveline appeared to revel in its one-sidedness. When a representative of the nuns contacted Liveline's producer to say that the nuns had contact with Margaret's brother, he was brusquely told to get his facts straight. Margaret had no brother, they said. But guess what? She had.

When the nuns released their letter to the media, I contacted Liveline. I raised one issue: what contact had they made with Margaret's family before running the item on Wednesday? Had they even been in touch with her daughter, the same one they interviewed the following day? Well? First, I got silence and a somewhat garbled answer to a question I hadn't asked.

Then a whispering at the other end of the phone. Then the series producer came on. "I would prefer if people would just listen to both programmes," she told me. "But," I asked, "did you inform any member of Margaret's family that this item was coming on?" More hedging, so I left it at that.

IT seems it's not only the Church or the politicians who are bad at apologising. Last Thursday, the Liveline team was unable to put their hands up and say, "we're sorry. We screwed up. We allowed the invasion of a dead woman's privacy. We allowed grossly unfair things to be said about the religious sisters who treated her kindly during her illness and who ensured that she was buried with dignity. We could have prevented all this unfairness."

A statement issued to the programme and all media last Thursday, outlining the facts in this case, was ignored by Liveline.

This type of thing makes me sigh with relief when Bertie Ahern says he favours a statutory press council. Bertie, presumably, is fed up of journalists obsessed with negative stories about politicians. Under the guise of holding legislators accountable, journalists are abusing people.

For example, GV Wright's offence of drink driving and causing severe injury was extremely serious. But wasn't there something exploitative about that interview with Wright's victim, who was understandably still in shock and angry, even if she was willing to go on the record?

A press council, of course, only refers to print media. What we really need is something to regulate the work of both print and broadcast journalists. The Broadcasting Complaints Commission lacks clout.

One RTÉ presenter was assessed to have contributed to "incitement to hatred" earlier this year, yet he still presents a programme as if nothing had happened. If this had been a politician or a garda or a member of a religious community, we would still be hearing about it if a head didn't roll.

I favour an ombudsman system. Imagine a trusted official, free from interference by the State, unfazed by media magnates and detached from the defensiveness of offending journalists. This official could name and shame those who offend standards of fairness and decency.

He or she could impose financial penalties and order compensation for people wronged. But most of all, the ombudsman could require the media to give prominent coverage to any findings made against it.

Good investigative journalists would have nothing to fear. But media bosses would soon be on the tail of those irresponsible hacks whose abuses cast a slur on the journalistic profession as a whole.