Newsworthy

Relatives, and friends of those involved in distressing high-profile court cases should not be subject of invasive press coverage

Some of the most haunting media images of 2005 came from events that started, at least in some cases, as innocent, routine passages in the daily lives of ordinary Irish men, women and children. They were the faces of people like the parents of Robert Holohan, killed in Co Cork by Wayne O'Donoghue; or Padraig Nally, sentenced for the manslaughter of John Ward; or Dolores McCrea, whose estranged husband murdered her in Donegal and burned her body on a bonfire of motor tyres; or the family of Georgina Eager who travelled to London to be present at the trial of Christopher Newman who had murdered their daughter in Walkinstown.

In news terms, many of these images were compelling. Television camera operators and press photographers are skilled in catching the expression, the glance or the exchange that defines the individual at a moment of stress or emotion. Some of these press photographs may be submitted for awards – and some of them may win awards.

Men and women who work in news are not without feeling or compassion. They know that behind the digitalised images there are real people, usually suffering pain, unused to the unwelcome attention that comes as a result of finding ones self newsworthy by random chance or a twist of fate. Often they are frightened. A few are overwhelmed by the ordeal of being part of a criminal trial, to the degree that they appear dazed and unaware of the cameras around them.

Nonetheless, the conviction here among editors and journalists – including photographers – is that there is nothing wrong with the publication of such photographs. The Constitution requires that the business of the courts be conducted in public (with some exceptions.) Photographs may not be taken within the precincts of the courts. But there is no inhibition on taking and publishing photographs or film of defendants, witnesses, family members or friends as they come and go from what is probably the worst ordeal they will face in their lives.

Not all countries and not all the world's news media take the same view. Nor do print journalists or their editors everywhere accept that every jot and tattle of individuals' private lives can be reported in the newspapers, merely because these details have been given as evidence in a court case.

Cases of domestic homicide in Sweden, for example, do not attract the detailed, blanket coverage that is standard in Irish and British newspapers. It is not uncommon for the main details of certain criminal trials to be reported while the identities of individuals involved are not revealed. And in such cases photographs or TV footage are out of the question.

The view is taken that in these cases there are innocent people – often children – whose lives have already been damaged by their proximity to a crime of violence, perhaps the death of a parent or loved one. Further damage is almost certain to be inflicted through loss of privacy and through media publicity. People who find themselves in the unfortunate position of being witnesses to serious crime, or whose lives are touched by such an event, ought not have to suffer the penalty of having to see their names and photographs in print or on national television.

News professionals in these islands may throw up their hands in horror at the notion of such "censorship." Terrible things happen, it will be argued, and when they do, they are of public concern. Those involved are no longer wholly private persons. They have been unfortunate to be caught up in events that concern the community as a whole. Yet the news media do exercise degrees of "censorship" as matters stand. Graphic and gory images are brought in from the scenes of road traffic accidents and other events. They do not go to air or into print. Scenes of grief at funerals or at the location of tragedies will generally be assessed with care and are sometimes withheld – though not often enough perhaps.

Why then are there no restraints on the reportage of what is revealed about individuals' private lives in the courts? Why are images captured near courthouses always fair game? How is the "public interest" possibly served by publishing photographs of the teenage girlfriend of another young person accused of a crime? How is it served by publishing the names and personal details of individuals whose brother or sister, father or mother, may have taken a life or committed some other serious crime under conditions of extreme stress?

The best argument that can be made is that the law allows it – indeed the argument could be stretched to say that the law demands it. And if the media fail to report things that are terrible and nasty – if they get into the business of censorship – how will they ever be believed by the public they serve?

It may be time for these arguments to be revisited. There is an imbalance in a situation where a homicide trial is reported, accompanied by a half-page picture of the accused's partner – who is not on trial, who has come forward as a witness and who is clearly under enormous stress. There is an imbalance where a murder trial is reported with daily photographs of the aged parents of the victim making their way to and from the court, evidently frail, distressed and emotional.

Editors and journalists, whether individually or through the NUJ, would not be doing their craft any disservice if they were to think this through and put some sort of ground-rules into place. The decency and humanity that has traditionally underpinned Irish journalism has to be reasserted. It is not sufficient for its practitioners to wait until rules are handed down at some time in the future by a press ombudsman or a new press council

Conor Brady is Editor Emeritus of The Irish Times. He is a senior teaching fellow at the UCD Graduate School of Business where he lectures in modern media.