Novelty value

There was little novelty in the news in recent weeks.

Usually news is associated with novelty, as in: "Dog bites man: not news. Man bites dog: news." But in late October the headlines conspicuously flouted that old principle, screaming at first about the startling fact that Sunday newspapers had taken a speculative flier about a major story; moving on to the extraordinary revelation that priests had sexually abused children; then getting quite alarmed that the Iranian president thinks Israel shouldn't exist.

Since these stories follow on the heels of heated exclusives about a model using cocaine in the company of rock musicians, can we expect scoops about the Pope's religion and bears' excretory habits?

Corny jokes aside, Meejit is capable of making distinctions: the Ferns report provided a classic set-piece opportunity to take stock and attack an issue in depth – and while one can argue that the coverage managed to be both copious and superficial, there's a case for giving this story due time and outrage. (Undoubtedly, however, prurience played a part in its popularity.)

The amount of newsprint and air-time given to the Sunday papers' Lawlor cock-up was a different matter. In some places, notably Village, it was used as way into the iniquities of commercial media and the Independent group in particular. This was better than treating it as some unique error meriting unparalleled apology, but it brought its own problems.

Newspapers arguably have an innate tendency to get things wrong in the pursuit of sensation. Analyst Tomas Peucer wrote that journalists "do not think their works can be approved and become popular unless they sprinkle them with lies" – and he wrote that in 1690. The tendency is tempered by the importance of credibility for the audience a given paper seeks to attract, and by legal considerations.

For centuries Sunday papers in particular have emphasised entertainment over credibility, and Liam Lawlor's combination of being (a) dead and (b) crooked removed all further constraints. (Ask the guys in Mountjoy about the licence to lie about them that the press gets from (b) alone.) Tony O'Reilly has little to do with it, no more than Rupert Murdoch would if the Sunday Times had reported the story. And recall that O'Reilly's reputation in England is as the noble, profit-scorning rescuer of the upstanding London Independent.

Moreover, the over-reaction to the papers' Lawlor mistake has the peculiar effect of underlining the prurient hypocrisy that made the erroneous story so attractive in the first place. It seems the most awful thing you can say about a man is that he was in the company of a prostitute, even when the same man is partly responsible for corruptly degrading our capital city, dimming the lives of thousands.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn't like Israel, that's for sure. In saying he views its very existence as illegitimate, he goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable diplomacy in recent years, but reflects the views, undoubtedly, of most Muslims and many others besides.

But did he really "call for Israel's destruction", or "threaten" it with "eradication"? It has been bizarrely hard to read his exact words in Western media outlets, but here's how he is quoted in the first Associated Press report of his speech to a "World Without Zionism" meeting. He said: "There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world."

The reporter leads the story by calling these "fiery words that Washington said underscores its concern over Iran's nuclear program". But they're really a restatement of the traditional Iranian position, a fact the president underscored by quoting Ayatollah Khomeini's belief that Israel "must be wiped off the map". In context it is clear he predicted that Palestinians would do the wiping, not Iranian nukes – despite the reporter's spin.

This spin was widely picked up. While undoubtedly Ahmadinejad is unpleasantly hostile to Israel, the notion that he made a genocidal threat is more a handy, Bushy stick to beat Iran with than an accurate reflection of his speech.