Press freedom comes carrying a very high price

Date Published: {J}

There was a rich irony that Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy was at NUI Galway last Thursday night to talk about freedom of the press, at the end of a day when defending that right – and being vindicated by five judgements to nil in the Supreme Court – cost her newspaper €600,000 in costs.

Because, as in any other business, there is nothing quite like major financial risk to force those who push the barriers to rein in their targets.Geraldine Kennedy and journalist Colm Keena had won a Supreme Court case against a High Court order requiring them to reveal the source of an article on payments to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

However, in what was described as 'exceptional circumstances', the Supreme Court ruled against them on costs.The Supreme Court held that their behaviour in destroying documents at the centre of the case did not entitle them to an order for costs in their favour.

The reality is that if they didn’t destroy those documents, the focus would have switched from the former Taoiseach’s money trail to an investigation into who spilt the beans.

Despite her disappointment, Geraldine Kennedy said the decision of the Supreme Court in July was a landmark one that enshrined the principal of journalistic privilege and the protection of sources into Irish law for the first time.

She's right in theory but there are very few papers who would risk exposure to this sort of punitive ruling at a time when revenues generally are in decline. It was admirable then that she braved the floods and her disappointment to head west to NUIG later on Thursday to fulfil a longstanding engagement and address what she saw as challenges to press freedom in the 21st century.

She told the gathering of academics, students and guests that her only concern on the case was the public’s right to know and in doing so to protect journalistic sources.

If the person who leaked the information to the Irish Times on Mr Ahern’s unorthodox financial affairs were found, he or she would have served a minimum of six months in prison.

Because in addition to trampling all over the notion of press freedom, the state is equally keen to stamp out whistleblowing – despite all of the noise it makes to the contrary.

Indeed the dissemination of information generally is a problem for the powers that be – why else would they pass a Freedom of Information Act and then put every obstacle they can think of in the way of making that process work?

Geraldine Kennedy pointed out that freedom of the press wasn’t some carte blanche for journalists to do whatever they wanted – it was about journalists serving the public’s right to know as citizens what was going on around them.

Detractors will argue that the sins of the tabloids – intrusion, invasion of privacy, sensationalism, a race to the bottom – have cost those who behave in a more responsible way, but that’s just an easy excuse for not embracing the notion of a free press in the first place.

The problem, as always, comes back to money; are papers prepared to pay for investigative journalism, which by its nature cannot be churned out in 20 minutes – and if they do, are they willing to bear the financial consequences.

To be truly independent, Geraldine Kennedy said, the press had to be financially secure. Accepting that very few in any walk of life can claim that in the current climate, the problems are exacerbated for newspapers who, in some cases, have to deal with advertisers making demands on editorial coverage – or even worse, who have an owner determined to push through a personal agenda.

But the biggest threat to freedom of the press still comes from Government and state authorities who treat media with suspicion at best and distain at worst.

When the Supreme Court backs that by ruling that a newspaper – one vindicated in its actions through the highest court in the land – should then pay all of the costs of both sides as though they had in reality lost, you can see that it’s not just the Government which places minimal importance on freedom of the press.

Thankfully the big hit hasn’t dampened the determination of the Irish Times to fight the good fight, but in a country where corruption was the norm for three decades, that’s an uphill battle.

The Supreme Court verdict on costs at least lets us know where we stand. But the state should remember that this isn’t just about freedom for the press – it’s about the public’s right to know. And that’s a price still worth paying.

Read more on page 15 of this week's Connacht Tribune.