Rights and duties

Michael McDowell loves representative democracy so much that he delights when a party showing at four per cent in the polls determines the policy direction of our Government.

Meejit was pleased last week to see the editor of this august journal elegantly deconstruct (aka savagely demolish) Pseudo-Democrat McDowell's recent speech on media rights and duties, especially since Vincent Browne himself seemed among the justice minister's targets.

But Boss Browne largely ignored one of the minister's most outrageous phrases: he said the media have a Constitutionally-derived duty "to uphold the authority of the Irish state". All suggestions that McDowell's authoritarian tendencies have been exaggerated go out the window as that phrase blows in. If it had been uttered in the White House, even the pliant US media might be moved to bleat "hey, wait a minute".

It should be the basis of any genuine liberalism that no one has a duty to uphold any authority if he or she hasn't been duly sworn to that effect. The classic liberal view of the press is that it should stand apart from the state and be prepared to question its authority: the media's "duty" is to the public. More prosaically, commercial media have a transcendent duty to owners and shareholders.

The Minister needn't worry. The reality is that there is almost always a sufficient coincidence of interests between media organisations and the state that the latter's authority is upheld, if not sanctified, in the vast majority of news coverage.

Ample evidence has been provided in recent days. While by necessity gardaí and Dublin city officials have been criticised for Saturday's scenes of riot (usually for insufficient crackdown on the anti-loyalist demo), it has rarely occurred to the media that seeking and conveying the perspective of the demon "rioters" is part of journalism's remit.

As an RTÉ journo put it: "There's near-universal condemnation of the troublemakers who fermented [sic – well, there was alcohol involved] the violence." Near-universal views are the ones that merit most critical examination.

With wanton disregard for objectivity, RTÉ TV news anchor Eileen Dunne said to a reporter on Saturday's late news: "The overwhelming feeling tonight, talking to people around here… is one of anger." On what basis is the righteous "anger" of Donnybrook worthy of national ventilation, but the anger of the inner-city worthy only of condemnation?

For the record: Meejit missed the action and reckons Love Ulster wasn't a march worth blocking. It remains to be established how provocative gardaí were, but much of what occurred is unjustifiable. On the other hand, it seems the violence was pretty non-lethal, and the attacks on property and looting largely were carried out by opportunists who saw the cops (hated, with good reason, in their communities) on the far side of barricades. Genuinely independent journalists might take the opportunity to ask why it's "free enterprise" for Foot Locker to charge €90 for a pair of runners stitched for a few cents in an Asian sweatshop, but "crime" for a poor Dubliner to remove them from the premises.

To be sure, Dubs looted in 1916, and sectarian street-fighting is a venerable city tradition. Well we might wish that some republicans were more mindful of the third colour on the flag, but we learned enough about Love Ulster in recent weeks to grasp the tradition of imperial thuggery it represents.

For Eoghan Harris in the Sunday Independent, all the "tribal" thugs were on one side. Perhaps hampered by an early deadline, his analysis descended into lurid fantasy: that rioters "attacked the Protestant march"; that "lumpen republicans... used iron railings to rip into the marchers". More seriously, Harris demanded that a public inquiry "should pay close attention to the tribal role played by Newstalk 106 in relation to its Dublin working-class audience".

NewsTalk's demographics aside, it sounds dangerously McDowellian. In the real world, as Richard Delevan's fine weekend blogging made clear, NewsTalk provided live street-level coverage of the rioting while RTÉ Radio 1 broadcast sports and built up its "anger" for the evening shows. Now, which station was doing its duty?