Privacy in public life – Lenihan, Adams and Iris

Iris, we understand, went voluntarily to the Press Association with her news. Adams’ niece was the source of the story which has raised so many questions for the Sinn Fein President. We know about these events because protagonists to them chose to make them public.

On the other hand TV3 controversially chose to broadcast speculation about the Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s illness without his consent. Their defence, that it was in the public interest to do so.  (clip below – thanks to protector1973 for clip)

Michael Foley, head of journalism at DIT, has an interesting article in today’s Irish Times arguing that the Lenihan saga could lead to a rethink of Irish privacy law. 

The decision of TV3 to run a story concerning the health of Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan on St Stephen’s Day was based on rumour, with only one justification – to be first, and so gain a profile for the station.

A rumour concerning Mr Lenihan’s health was circulating around Leinster House from last Tuesday or Wednesday. The Department of Finance press office confirmed nothing; journalists were told a statement would be issued after Christmas, and so the political correspondents took their breaks.

The next they heard was an unusual e-mail from TV3 advising them to watch TV3 news for a story of “national importance”.

But what did the station know that other journalists did not?

At time of broadcast TV3 had no more than a rumour, and no attributable source. Whatever happens in the new year will not change that. TV3’s justification, according to a newspaper report of a comment by TV3 head of news Andrew Hanlon, was that the story was of major public interest “primarily because of the fact that he is so widely perceived as being the one man who can get us out of our current economic woes”, a strange justification indeed, and as for the timing, well, again according to Hanlon, as quoted in a newspaper report: “At the end of the day, the story was around, and it was only a matter of time before it would come out.”

That is the nub of the issue. Competition is pushing journalism to publish rumour, and to stretch what is meant by the public interest to breaking point. Will news executives allow journalists the professional autonomy to make judgments in future, or will they be told to print or broadcast rumours and other dodgy stories by executives with one eye scanning audience figures? Will journalists be allowed the time to ensure accuracy if a story demands another source, or will they be forced to put a story out there before a rival does so?

Journalists must remember they have the power to draw the line and understand that while they have the freedom to publish or broadcast – and that must be defended – they might also have a responsibility, at times, not to. At the same time, journalism must not return to more deferential times either.

Journalism is a tricky profession, with few rules. There are guidelines, from the National Union of Journalists, the Press Council and the new Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, but that is all they are, guidelines, offering a possible path through what can seem an ethical and moral maze. Each case is specific, which again makes it difficult to write rules. The code of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, of course relevant to TV3, states: “Factual programming shall not contain material that could reasonably be expected to cause undue distress or offence unless it is editorially justified and in the public interest.” TV3 would presumably argue that a 48-hour period to allow the family to be informed was ensuring the station did not cause undue distress, and that the public interest was served because of who Lenihan is.

Unlike journalists, politicians like rules, and the Minister for Justice has already warned he will revisit his privacy proposals if the media does not behave. The insensitive invasion of a popular politician’s privacy might be just the example he needs.

Maybe I am being a stereotypical – soon to be – legislator but I do believe this was an invasion of privacy which has no bearing on Mr Lenihan’s ability to do his job. People have a right to privacy and this extends to even those in the  highest offices of state. When the question of public interest arises, and it is more likely to with people in public life, the duty must surely lie with the media to evidence that a robust threshold has been met.

It’s meant to be a no news week

Traditionally media interest in the week between Christmas and New Year is taken up with everyone’s obsession – the weather. This year has been no different. The cold snap has the talk shows busy with talk of burst pipes and gritting. Rural Ireland is bearing the brunt of the sub-zero conditions and with nowhere else to go but the phone many residents are expressing their anger on the airwaves.

Then Iris resigns reopening a debate about depression which is long over due. As The Irish News put it today ‘Iris News’ could have filled a newspaper. Hopefully the media will dedicate some serious coverage in the months ahead to her condition and not just the outrageous outbursts which have landed her in the headlines in the past.

Gerry Adams is still making headlines. There are still serious and significant questions about what he knew and when about his brother.   This story will run well into 2010.

Christmas can also be a time of great loss.

I attended the funeral of Cllr Peter O’Hagan on Dec 27th. Today I have another, this time for the mother of one of the press corp who died on Christmas Eve.  Another acquaintance also lost his mum on Dec 26th and Cahal Daly is in a very serious way according to today’s press reports.  Tom Travers the Belfast magistrate shot by the IRA as he left mass in the 1970’s also passed away on St Stephen’s Day.  I lost both my parents and my grandfather around Christmas but at least they were not alone when they passed away. That was not the case for the young Polish man who froze to death in South Belfast.

Iris retires following silent battle with depression

In the end a very modern illness forced the controversial MP for Strangford from public life.  Iris Robinson survived phyisical challenges in recent years, but she was also it turns out battling severe depression.

Whatever your views on Mrs Robinson this is sad news indeed. Nearly one in four of us will suffer from mental illness at some stage in our lives. Most make full recoveries but for some the condition becomes so severe that normal life becomes impossible. When you are in public life this is all the more difficult. Depression is an indiscriminate illness and still taboo to many. It’s sufferers deserve much more support and understanding then modern society affords.

Elizabeth Wurtzel in her book Prozac Nation sums up what living in mental imprisonment is like:

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

Our thoughts on O’Conall St are with Mrs Robinson and the hundreds of thousands like her who suffer in silence this cold winters night.

I hope the Assembly is able to welcome her back in the fullness of time to talk about her condition and how government and society can do a lot more to support those suffering from it.

Anglo-Irish health not good

The Irish Times reports that the Tories have accused the British government of wrongly diverting millions of pounds from the National Health Service to pay for the healthcare of pensioners in the Republic.

Under reciprocal arrangements the two countries make payments to each other to cover the cost of providing healthcare to their citizens — including pensioners — living in the other’s country.

However, the Tories said British government figures showed that while the UK received just £2,606 a year per pensioner, Ireland got almost three times with £7,457 per pensioner.

Earlier this year the party claimed that the UK had overpaid the health service here up to €750 million euros over the past five years as a result of the scheme.

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said Government “incompetence” was costing the NHS millions of pounds.

“It is inconceivable that healthcare in Ireland really costs three times as much as in the UK. The Government needs to explain why they have agreed to such a bad deal for UK taxpayers,” he said.

“NHS funds are always precious. For the Government to carelessly enter into an arrangement like this is a betrayal of the trust we have placed in them to use those funds wisely.”

The British Department of Health said that the figures reflected the average cost of healthcare in each country. While the UK was close to the overall European average, Ireland was at the higher end of the range.

A spokesman said a new agreement on the level of payments had been reached “It would appear that the opposition’s information is somewhat out of date and misleading,” the spokesman said.

“Negotiations with the Republic of Ireland have been on-going since 2007 on the amount the UK should be paying to cover the cost of healthcare for UK pensioners living in Ireland.

“As a result of this agreement, the UK has paid the Republic a total of just over €785 million for the years 2007-9 — or approximately €260 million a year — considerably less than the figure suggested by the shadow health secretary.”

Cllr Peter O’Hagan RIP

I first met Peter O’Hagan 15 years ago and last saw him earlier this month.

His death last night will cast a shadow over this Christmas in many a household across the North. Peter was a good councillor and great mentor. He was a tireless proponent of renewal in the SDLP and was arguing for just that when he spoke recently at a leadership debate.

When I was selected as Carmel Hanna’s successor his was one of the early messages to come through. He reminded me that he was the first person to sign my pay cheque when I came North and that he looked forward to hearing me on the floor.

South Down MP Eddie McGrady said he had known Peter well since his schooldays in Downpatrick.

 “Peter has been a lifelong friend and advisor who felt keenly about righting political wrongs. He was an ardent supporter of the Civil Rights movement and all that flowed from it, and he helped create and run the structures of a new party, the SDLP.

“He held various positions in the party and worked hard as a public representative for decades and was always an astute observer and advisor to me and others in the party. I will miss him as a colleague and a friend.”

 Cllr Brian Heading, a colleague on Lisburn council, said Peter had been an unfailing source of good advice.

“We drew on Peter’s long experience right up to the end, but we will also remember him for supporting and promoting younger representatives to ensure renewal of the party.”

Progressive politics in Ireland

An acre of news print will be written about the future of the SDLP now that Mark Durkan has said he is moving on. Some of what has already been written is insightful and credible and some a rehash of old animosities.

The real debate will take place within the SDLP. Ordinary members will gather to debate the opportunities a new leader can create for the party. It will be a debate as much about ideas as personalities.

Here is the question. Is the SDLP’s future as a progressive party?

Some will argue that the ‘left’ is sliding because the relationships between capital and labour, on which it was founded, has changed to the extent that class based politics is no longer relevant. Others will say that the race to the centre has forced progressive parties out of their natural space and onto territory bringing only confusion and internal dissent (the trade unions are not generally too keen on public private partnerships for example).  The anglophiles will point to New Labour and its marketing success and in complimentary or condemnatory tones comment that they are all spin – and that is why they win.

So has the relationship between capital and labour changed beyond Marx’s wildest dreams?

Yes.

Is the class divide crumbling and is traditional socialism becoming increasingly irrelevant in the twenty first century?

Yes.

Is this a bad thing?

Well, no, unless you think that better education and healthcare, better jobs, any form of globalisation and the technological revolution are bad things.

But we all know that things aren’t perfect.

Far from it, and herein lies the opportunity for progressive politicians everywhere.

As I write in the face of Christmas 2009 people are more empowered than ever. And the opportunity for progressive politics to represent that personal empowerment and deliver a continuing message of hope has never been greater. The successful progressive politicians of the past twenty years in Britain and Ireland have all stood in front of the banner of advancement – economic advancement, social advancement, political advancement and societal advancement. They were leaders of empowerment who connected with the marginalised as much as the affluent and most critically, who communicated to the ordinary working man and woman. They said “support me and I will support you and your ambitions, your hopes for your children and your community”. They connected with the working majority without forgetting the marginalised minorities. Essentially they were for the many, not the few.

John Hume was such a politician. His SDLP was positive and liberating. It talked about peace and jobs and a post-sectarian New Ireland. It was empowering and built on possibility not rejection. As Hume put it “solutions, not slogans”.

The same could be said for Dick Spring. In the late eighties he represented the ambition for a better Ireland that in many ways has become the Celtic Tiger. He talked about levelling up not levelling out. His Labour Party was about better education and health care of course, but also about innovation and entrepreneurship. There was substance behind the message.

In capturing the imagination and the votes of the ambitious they always sought to build on what was right about society.

No ideology is perfect.

None can claim a monopoly on right and the best progressive politics builds on what has worked in the past. It is never destructive or negative. Blair mastered this. After two decades of conservatism and a full decade in labour party civil war, his turn came to present a credible, and by this I mean electable, Labour Party to the people. Many criticised him for appearing to swing too far to the right. I think this is unfair. Any examination of the 1997 manifesto would corroborate that this was a Labour Party standing for election not a conservative one. What labour traditionalists were more likely criticising was his ‘appearing’ to swing. New Labour had learnt from the Iron Lady and they were going to beat her party at its own game.  New Labour would be the party of opportunity and hope – not the party that says you can’t own your council house, the very thing Mrs Thatcher was to the people of Britain in the late seventies.

Fast forward a decade in Ireland and Bertie Ahern wins an historic third term as the Taoiseach of hope and opportunity, something Dick Spring had represented in 1997.  He became the hero of the commuter belt. The representative of those who drive the Celtic tiger, not from behind the CEO’s desk but in the call centre and on the shop floor, the ‘added value’ in the knowledge based economy. Yet that is all now gone.

There is a gaping need for progressive politics because there is a huge difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. Having a social democratic model for a society is pretty pointless if you never get the chance to implement it. Telling people all about what is wrong with their country when they are fairly happy with things is rarely successful. Being a party of protest in a world of opportunity is as contradictory as it sounds.

The Celtic Tiger is dead and the North is stagnant yet this is, more than ever, an island of ambition.

As our major social democratic parties enter new phases they should think about how to start talking the talk and then set about demonstrating how they, above all others, can walk the walk.

In simple terms, modernise your policies and develop strong messages. By this I mean polices that are relevant, new relationships with the trade unions, a little less protest. More than credible on the economy, strong on equality, a community voice with a national vision, pluralist and ambitious. That’s the sort of social democratic party that could succeed in the twenty first century.

Big questions for Gerry Adams over brother

If today’s report by Suzanne Breen in the Sunday Tribune is anything to go by then West Belfast MP - MLA Gerry Adams has serious questions to answer about what he knew and when regarding his brother Liam’s alleged abuse of his daughter.

The paper reports the Sinn Fein President was aware of allegations as far back as 1987.

Mr Adams needs to address this question but also why his brother remained actively involved in republican politics and was a party candidate for selection in 1997.

Following the Bishop Murray’s resignation there is simply no public tolerance for cover ups and buck passing in matters of child sexual abuse on this island.

Sinn Fein’s Pat Doherty this week called for an inquiry into clerical child sexual abuse in the North.

Update: speaking on RTE’s This Week Mr Adams says he altered one of his brother’s employers of his background. He accepts he should have done more to deal with the issue whilst revealing that his father too was an abuser.

A new day but not a new dawn

They talked hard into the night but the US could only get a framework for agreement with China and the other big polluters. We don’t know yet who was pushing for more but if president Obama’s public remarks are anything to go by it appears he was ready to take the United States into uncharted territory in order to get a meaningful agreement.

Sir David King, the climate guru, has just said it is as good as we could have hoped for. He argues that the momentum is up and that the EU, US and other ‘progressive states’ should focus on shifting the positions of India and China who appear to have been the major obstacles to agreement.

There are some powers in the compromise on the table according to reports but it is well short of where we should be. 

The five-nation deal promises to deliver $30bn (£18.5bn) of aid for developing nations over the next three years, and outlined a goal of providing $100bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change.

President Obama said the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa had “agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2C and, importantly, to take action to meet this objective”.

There is an excellent rolling blog by Richard Black on the BBC website tracking the twists and turns through the night.  However top blogger by unanimous verdict goes to AFP’s Stephen Collison who has captured the emotion and events with wit.

Chaos and farce reigned at the birth of a climate accord agreed by a clique of leaders, with statesmen going missing, critics crying foul and hacks stampeding on vain hunts for Barack Obama.

Fatigue fermented a feverish cocktail of human emotion overnight Friday as the US president claimed to have staved off a default in the dying hours of global warming talks in Copenhagen.

But small nations like Cuba and Nicaragua erupted in fury at being snubbed in a game of big power diplomatic chess also involving developing giants Brazil, China and India.

Claiming a “meaningful” deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Obama fired up carbon-belching Air Force One and raced back from the global warming summit to outrun a storm ironically tipped to dump a foot of snow on Washington.Related article: Environmental groups denounce ‘abject failure’

It was a stunning turnaround, as earlier, as the summit went into extra time, the whole project was on the verge of collapse, US officials said.

Crunch time at Copenhagen

Its crunch time at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen. 

The BBC reports that US President Barack Obama has warned world leaders that time is running out to strike a deal at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

President Obama told delegates that the international community’s ability to take collective action was in doubt.

But neither the US, the EU or China offered anything new as fears grew that a deal may be slipping away.

The UN has now asked world leaders to plan for staying overnight in Copenhagen because of the deadlock.

Friday was scheduled to be the last day of the conference, but a draft political agreement drawn up by a small group of countries was rejected during overnight discussions.

And the EU did not raise its offer on cutting emissions from 20% to 30%, as some observers had anticipated.

Addressing the summit on Friday, President Obama said: “While the science of climate change is not in doubt, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now, and it hangs in the balance.”

Can global need ever be compatible with national or regional interest?

Can the interests of an individual nation be reconciled with humanity’s greater good?

Can a patriotic, nationally elected politician really give people in other countries equal consideration?

These are questions which many of our local politicians seem unable to reconcile. Following his TEDTalk calling for a global ethic, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown fields questions from TED Curator Chris Anderson.