Dail Sketch/Frank McNally:The media's retreat from Moscow had threatened to be long and arduous. So there was quiet relief in certain sections of the press gallery when the Opposition turned up for Question Time with hot-off-the-press copies of the Ferns report.
The Fourth Estate was not yet in the clear, but as the First Estate moved into the firing line, grateful hacks seized on the diversion to slink farther away from the crime scene.
Maybe it was a lucky escape for the Opposition, too. Having to defend Liam Lawlor, however unjustly he had been maligned in death, would have been hard on them. Instead, Ferns document under his arm, Enda Kenny led the chorus of outrage over what he termed "a shocking wake-up call to church and State" and what the Taoiseach called "a catalogue of gross abuse and dereliction of duty".
Pat Rabbitte praised the authors of "an insightful and coherent report on a terrible chapter in our history". But while agreeing that most people would be appalled at how the church had been used to cover the abuse of innocents, he suggested blame did not stop with the clergy. "This House should hang its head in shame, in that we turned a blind eye to this appalling period," he said.
With the exception of a visiting delegation from the parliament of Australia, the House duly hung its head, including the press gallery,which had been hanging its head already.
Even when Joe Higgins disturbed the consensus on the issue of the day, it was not to defend the honour of the TD with whom he shared a constituency.
It was the mistreatment of postal workers by Noel Dempsey rather than of Liam Lawlor by the press that bothered the Dublin West man, who, true to type, portrayed the workers in heroic terms, "dragging themselves from their beds on cold winter mornings many hours before most people".
Mr Lawlor's defence was left to an unlikely quarter. In the week that Fianna Fáil reclaimed the 1916 Rising, Sinn Féin appeared to claim the disgraced former TD as a martyr. There may have been mixed motives. This looked like the political equivalent of the Northern GAA man who once justified breaching the ban on playing rugby because it was the only way he could legally kick an RUC officer; except that here the part of the RUC officer was played by the Sunday Independent.
First Arthur Morgan called for a special debate on ways to prevent "certain shameless newspapers from publishing fiction as fact to earn even more for their fat-cat owners". Then Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin asked whether the Minister for Justice might be considering new legislation to curb the power of "media moguls", in the light of the "outrageous and deeply wounding coverage of the tragic death of Liam Lawlor".
It was clear that, here at least, Sinn Féin would support a hard line from Mr McDowell. Separately, Mr Ahern confirmed that the Defamation Bill would be finalised by Christmas. The media's retreat from Moscow continues, and the worst of the Russian winter may yet be to come.