LAST Friday the editorial in this newspaper enthused that the inconclusive outcome to the De Rossa-Sunday Independent libel case was "not just a good result for the Sunday Independent and Mr Eamon Dunphy but for newspapers' and journalism in this jurisdiction". The editorial continued: "Coming on the heels of Mr Albert Reynolds's reverse in the London High Court, it may indicate that the balance is changing in libel proceedings."
It does nothing of the kind.
The jury in the Proinsias De Rossa libel case was asked an initial simple question: "Do the words complained of mean that the plaintiff was involved in or tolerated serious crime?" They could not decide the answer to that by a majority of at least nine to three. And because of that failure the inconclusive outcome emerged.
It was not because the jury was of the view that Mr De Rossa was not libelled, or that even if he were libelled as a public figure he should be able to take the heat. Still less that the public interest is better served by tolerating libellous material on" matters connected to public affairs.
Indeed, we know from reports of what went on in the jury room that a substantial defeat for the Sunday Independent was only narrowly averted. A majority of eight was in favour of finding that the words complained of did mean that Mr De Rossa was involved in or tolerated serious crime, and they were prepared to award him £75,000 in damages. Had one juror of the four who were against this outcome changed his/her mind, the decision would have been perceived as a substantial defeat for newspapers and journalism.
But would it have been such a defeat? Or, to pose the question differently, even in its rosiest complexion can the outcome as it was be represented as any "victory" for journalism or the press or the public interest?
To be fair to Eamon Dunphy, he alone among commentators at the time raised the issue of the fitness for government office of members of Democratic Left who so recently at the time had been members of a party which had hag associations with murder, violence, knee-cappings, gangsterism, counterfeiting and robbery. These people had remained curiously indifferent to the torrent of reports and allegations associating their then party with such activities.
Nobody suggested that any member of what is now Democratic Left was himself or herself involved in such activities or condoned them, but there was little evidence that they diligently sought the truth about what was going on before they allowed themselves to be used as the acceptable face of the Workers' Party. For that they should have been made accountable.
Neither did they seem to have had any misgivings about a whole plethora of other goings-on, such as the infiltration of the trade union movement and the media and the manipulation of these institutions for secretive ends.
It is unlikely that the stalwarts of Democratic Left did not know of this abuse of politics on a grand scale over almost two decades, and for that they should have been made accountable.
In raising some of these issues, Eamon Dunphy did a service. He was alone, and characteristically courageous, in doing so at the time. But this service could have been done with verve and explicitness without running the risk of libel proceedings. Instead, it was done in a manner that forced Independent Newspapers" to claim in the course of the proceedings that, effectively, the article said nothing at all about Proinsias De Rossa.
IF libel actions are to be defended on such a basis, how can this be represented as a victory for journalism or for the press? All that the four jury members who held out said was that the article did not mean that Proinsias De Rossa was involved in or tolerated serious crime. They agreed with Independent Newspapers that the article was bland and, effectively, said nothing, or at least nothing about Proinsias De Rossa being involved in or tolerating serious crimes.
But what would have been the case had the jury been asked simply whether the article meant that Proinsias De Rossa knew of such activities associated with the Workers' Party while he was a member and while he was president of that party? It is hardly believable that anyone on the jury would have found that the article did not indeed mean that, and because Independent Newspapers had "conceded" in the case that Proinsias De Rossa did not know of such activities, the case would have been lost.
That would have been a resounding defeat for journalism and the press, for a case would have been lost on the basis of facts that were manifestly true.
Admittedly this would have been because of the manner in which the article was written and the refusal of the Sunday Independent to state immediately after publication what they freely conceded in court: that Proinsias De Rossa had no association with any of the crimes mentioned and had never tolerated such crimes.
The Irish Times editorial also stated that the jury "did not consider themselves in a position to give [Proinsias De Rossa] the clean bill of political health which would have come with a finding against the Sunday Independent and its columnist Mr Eamon Dunphy".
This is unfair to Proinsias De Rossa.
The jury was not asked to give or to withhold a "clean bill of political health" on Proinsias De Rossa. They were asked only to decide whether the words complained of meant that he was involved in or tolerated serious crime and whether these words meant that he supported anti-Semitism or violent communist aggression. In other words, the jury was concerned not with Mr De Rossa but with the article complained of.
Mr De Rossa had got his clean bill of political healthy from Independent Newspapers in the course of the trial when it was conceded that he was a fine fellow, that he was never involved in crime, that he never tolerated crime, that he knew nothing about the "Moscow letter" and certainly that he did not knowingly sign that letter, and that he knew nothing at all about what associates of the Workers' Party were doing while he was a prominent member of that party.
The issue for now is whether this has any relevance to our politics today. Certainly Eamon Dunphy was right to raise these matters in December 1992 when it was first proposed that Democratic Left become part of a government. But they have been in government now for 2 1/2 years and have shown themselves to be as tame a member of the establishment as Independent Newspapers could possibly wish.
It is the issue of their tameness that is now most relevant to Democratic Left. The question being: is Democratic Left to politics what Independent Newspapers said Eamon Dunphy's article was to outspoken journalism?