Connect: On Wednesday Vincent Browne argued in this newspaper for a statutory press council and change to the libel laws.
"There is rightly at present a public appetite for such changes in the light of the Liam Lawlor debacle. The Government and the Oireachtas should strike now," he wrote.
Browne is right that there's currently a public appetite for a press council.
Some of the journalism that accompanied the death of Liam Lawlor was putrid and a majority of readers would like the editors and reporters responsible for the putrescence to be chastised. But is the setting up of a statutory press council the best response?
There is no doubt that, as Browne argued, some proprietors, editors and other journalists abuse the prevailing freedoms of journalism in order to make a profit. Furthermore, he's right to point out the hypocrisy surrounding guff about "freedom of the press".
For the most part, the term refers to the power of owners and their hired gatekeepers to censor fact and comment.
"So let's not go dewy-eyed about the brittle flower of press freedom," he wrote. Again, he's perfectly right in this argument.
"Not alone is the press prone to boost its profits at the expense of the rights and feelings of citizens but it is also likely to use news and opinion and advance agendas all to the further enrichment of its owners," he added. True, yet again.
Still, journalists have traditionally argued for self-regulation and there are valid as well as clearly selfish reasons for this.
Among the more common arguments is that statutory intervention is wrong in principle and constitutes censorship; that there are already too many statutory controls on press freedom; that self-regulation offers the most effective sanction - namely peer review.
Beside the vileness of the journalism about Liam Lawlor such arguments can, of course, appear puny and self-serving.
Do, for instance, the proprietors, editors and reporters of offending papers give a toss about how others of their kind might see them?
Do they care at all?
Aren't they more likely to minimise their outrages by spurious attempts at "justification"?
Who knows? But few people - even if they make loot from it - like to be exposed as professionally squalid.
Sure, it can probably happen once to anyone. But a track record of grubbiness whether as proprietor, editor, reporter, whatever . . . it's not ideal, is it? It's like making money from pornography - there's something undeniably seedy about it and it's not being too sniffy to say so.
Anyway, Browne's central dilemma appears to be "who" ought to appoint the press council he envisages.
It's all very well to suggest, as he does, that such a council must not be packed with political hacks, that it be "comprised of people independent of Government and of the media itself" and that it should have power to impose sanctions on media that abuse freedoms.
But who should appoint these people? Even if, as Browne argues - though some of his choices are, at least, contentious - the council could be drawn from members of "the judiciary, trade unions, business organisations, the Equality Authority, women's groups and NGOs" who should appoint them? Is it possible to avoid political interference?
Judges, for instance, are political appointees. So why should a judge ever be a member of a press council? Some might well be superb but the principle of giving any lawyer more control over the media appears regressive.
Has the law not enough control already? Surely it's preferable to have journalists behave well because they want to rather than because they're forced to.
It's arguably business anyway that's to blame. You can look at the problem of, say, invasions of privacy, as a matter of journalism ethics. But you could equally logically see it as a matter of business ethics.
After all, it wouldn't be done if there wasn't profit to be made from it. Hence the golden rule: always distinguish between the business of the media and the function of journalism.
Furthermore, you must distinguish between the rightful business of the law and the function of ethics.
The idea that law - though it should always be observed except as a last resort - must be utterly obeyed means that it was once right to hang children for stealing bread. It was legal all right but it was never morally right . . . not now and not then either! How much press regulation should be by law or statute?
Some, but as little as is practicable, it seems. Certainly, a sanctioning press council could hurt offending proprietors and journalists in their pockets and through more official public opprobrium.
Yet most people already know the difference between trash journalism and the decent stuff. They do. They really do.
In that sense, the opinions of a peer group, including readers, are critical. Although the recent behaviour of the press suggests otherwise and the press council will come to pass Vincent Browne is, it seems to me, mistaken: a statutory press council is not needed because lawyers cannot be trusted any more than journalists. Media and legal shysters will always have sullied money.