MR De Rossa was a very powerful man who should have better things to do than intimidate a newspaper, Mr Dunphy told the court. He claimed he had no apology to make.
This was an attempt to intimidate the last newspaper in the country to allow people to give expression to their views no matter how unpopular they were.
Mr Hardiman asked: "Do you rant a lot?"
Mr Dunphy said: "I'm a very gentle person, a very happy person.
Earlier, Mr Hardiman suggested that the newspaper used him as a "boot boy" to supplement the more civilised editorial treatment.
Mr Dunphy said that was not true. Nobody in the Sunday Independent or in any other newspaper he had worked for had tried to, or succeeded in, telling him what to write. It had not happened and would not happen.
Mr Hardiman said he had mentioned that Vincent Browne had wanted him to tell him what he thought and he would write it out. Mr Dunphy said yes, but he refused and left.
Asked if he was engaged in propaganda, Mr Dunphy replied: "I was engaged in propaganda for Fine Gael and I was engaged for your own party, the PDs, as well."
Mr Hardiman: "Put away the idiot cards."
Mr Dunphy said it would be unthinkable to him that he would write to orders and be anybody's "boot boy". It was a jibe straight out of Phoenix magazine.
Mr Dunphy said that Mr De Rossa did not know about any specific illegal acts but he did know that serious things were going on that should not have been going on. "No reading of this article could in any way suggest, infer, or imply that Mr De Rossa was guilty of any illegal activity."