Madam, - It was with disgust that I read the reports of Liam Lawlor's death in several of the Sunday papers, with the allegations that the young woman he had been travelling with was a prostitute. I failed to see how this could be relevant to the public when Mr Lawlor was not in any way on State business.
It was with astonishment that I read yesterday that these allegations were completely false. They served no purpose but to cause embarrassment to Mr Lawlor's family at a time of grief.
Lamentably, it is unlikely that Mr Lawlor's family can receive any form of legal redress as we do not recognise defamation of the dead.
Surely this scurrilous reporting is yet another example of the chronic need for a press ombudsman before we descend even further into the British tabloid attitude of "publish first, investigate second"? - Yours, etc,
JACK HICKEY, Dalkey, Co Dublin.
A chara, - If some media reports on the circumstances of the death of Liam Lawlor are justly criticised as casting a slur on his character, do they not equally cast a slur on the character of Julia Kushnir, the other passenger in the car? The fact that she is not Irish, or that she is a woman, do not alter this. - Is mise,
PÁDRAIG McCARTHY, The Presbytery, Arklow, Co Wicklow.
Madam, - I was disgusted by the coverage of Liam Lawlor's tragic death by many of this country's newspapers. It must have been heart-wrenching for Mr Lawlor's family and loved ones to view some of the Sunday papers' headlines, with suggestions (put across as factual assertions) that his female companion was a prostitute.
For example, the Sunday World's headline, "Lawlor Smash Girl is a Hooker", was the most heartless and inhumane headline I have ever seen. To publish such revelations with little or no evidence on the day after Mr Lawlor's death was a shameful decision.
Have the reporters, and their sub-editors and editors, no feelings of compassion or sympathy towards Mr Lawlor's widow and fatherless children? - Yours, etc,
CIARAN McCABE, Lucan, Co Dublin.