The editor of the Sunday Business Post, Mr Damien Kiberd, has said he would have no difficulty with the setting up of an Irish press council "with teeth".
He was responding to a question at the "Media and the Marketplace - Ethical Perspectives" conference in Dublin's Mater Dei Institute at the weekend.
Speaking on the theme "Media Accountability and Ethics" he said various Rubicons had been crossed in Irish journalism in recent years and instanced as examples the controversy over the Taoiseach and Ms Celia Larkin, and a Sunday Tribune interview with a man who said he was going to commit suicide and did so. The newspaper "didn't do anything about it", he said. Where the Taoiseach was concerned he could see "no public interest justification" for the controversy about his private life.
He criticised the use of an interview with Mr Tom Gilmartin, which he said the interviewee had been assured would not be used after he discovered his remarks were being recorded. And he questioned the practice of paying witnesses in libel actions as had happened in the Sunday Times/ "Slab" Murphy libel case.
He criticised the apparent indifference of people in the media to the "collateral damage to uninvolved parties" of some articles. He referred to Sunday Independent criticisms of Irish Times coverage of court cases and wondered whether they were driven by a concern to drum up sales.
Journalism as a trade, he said, was susceptible to massive commercial pressures. It was an arena where law rather than ethics was the chief concern. He had spent until 1 o'clock that (Saturday) morning editing copy with a lawyer at his shoulder, and quoted an Irish Times executive who had told him the paper had spent over £1 million the previous year on legal fees and costs alone.
Many young journalists did not have a good sense of ethics, he said. Journalists, especially younger ones, tended to be "very ambitious, egotistical people", and many used methods not known to their management, he added.
The problem was whose duty it was to introduce ethical standards, to monitor and decide what was breached.
Referring to the current tribunals, however, he said the role of the media had been "crucial, vital, and superb in telling the people of Ireland what has been going on in their public life". In this context he believed investigative journalists must continue regardless of the collateral damage. The RTE director-general, Mr Bob Collins, said the plethora of discussion programmes raised serious questions for people in broadcasting about "absence of reflection and the opportunity for prejudice to masquerade as objective opinion".
He felt that with the range of media outlets there was a real need for media courses, especially as there was little or no critical evaluation of the electronic media.
Mr John Horgan, of Dublin City University's School of Communications, criticised the "monumental coverage of a particular kind [which caused] huge collateral damage". Coverage of court cases and the effects these had on victims, families and friends concerned him in particular. He found it very difficult to justify.
