Humble pie

Meejit has been looking at some recent media mistakes and apologies.

Meejit is loath to claim any influence with the media world's powers-that-be. But, at least occasionally, this column gets in somewhere around the vicinity of the leading edge of the press Zeitgeist. Back in the summer you could read here first(ish) that the free-press martyrdom of Judith Miller of the New York Times was not all the puff pieces (including a couple in Village) cracked it up to be. Now she's not just out of jail but out on her journalistic ear, badly burnt by her old comrades.

Then a couple of weeks ago Meejit readers learned that the recent Guardian profile of Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes was "petulant and distorting of Chomsky's record". Lo and behold, half the internet and (eventually) the paper's readers' editor agreed. Not only did the increasingly dreary Guardian publish a long apology and retraction (albeit one that lacked visual impact in the print edition, sitting as it did unheadlined in the corrections column), it even withdrew the piece from its website.

This merits no more than two cheers, at best. Obviously the piece never should have run, but since it did, its disappearance down the website's memory hole is more than a little creepy. Presumably the electronic eraser was applied because the article was arguably actionable, but it's hard to imagine that the libertarian Chomsky wouldn't have agreed to see it stay in the archives with a disclaimer tacked prominently on top of it. Indeed, that's the way it sits in his official site, www.chomsky.info, another exhibit in his copious dossier on media lies.

The Sunday Independent website has, of course, similarly expunged a recent slur – not one of the many it has directed against honest, decent left-leaners like Chomsky, but one particular erroneous charge, that the reactionary and corrupt Liam Lawlor had spent his last few minutes in the company of a prostitute. (There's even a big white hole where the story should be in the PDF image of the 23 October front page.)

Meejit didn't join the frenzied attacks against that paper about the Lawlor story. It was, of course, a nasty and shabby piece of journalism, but there are plenty of those around. It was quickly and loudly corrected, and as a speculative mistake it was really of no more consequence than, say, Geraldine Kennedy's front-page Irish Times story in the summer of 1994, declaring that the IRA was not going to call a ceasefire. The Sunday Lawlor stories probably had a salutary effect, heightening public suspicion of press reports and encouraging a bit more caution in newspaper offices.

No, Meejit is not that interested in the Sunday Indo stories, like the Lawlor one, that any slapdash, sensationalist paper might well have run. We're more concerned about the ones with unique qualities that set them apart, because they serve the peculiar political and business agenda that is at the heart of Independent News and Media.

That's why we always look out for the criticisms that prompt a Sindo counter-attack. Last month Meejit struck a passing and glancing blow against a Sunday Independent lead story claiming Bertie Ahern had "fears" about the alleged "links" of Frank Connolly and the Centre for Public Inquiry that Connolly runs. The Sindo struck back, catching us in a typo (mea culpa) but omitting to mention that the only new information (as in "news") in their story was the distinctly dubious claim about the Taoiseach's fears – and why should we care what Bertie fears anyway? Surely journalists should relish a politician's fear?

The reason for the page-one piece, and for the follow-up attack on Meejit, was simply to keep the pressure on Connolly with familiar old material. And the reason for that, in turn, should now be obvious: Connolly's centre has the resources and the will to investigate Tony O'Reilly's record as Ireland's most powerful media and financial player. The papers that O'Reilly owns know it is their job to confuse the public by smearing the investigators.