Marking Time

The infamous Liveline libel remark is available via Gavin in case you haven’t heard it.

I actually heard it live and I didn’t think much of it, just part of the normal cut-and-thrust of talk radio. I was a little taken aback to hear that Martin Cullen was threatening to sue RTE for libel even though they hadn’t made the comment, immediately disconnected the caller, and issued a grovelling apology. I was even more taken aback to discover that under the laws of this country, RTE, as a publisher, could indeed be held liable for the libel.

The potential that this law has for restricting free speech in the public domain is hard to calculate. RTE may have enough funds to deal with this sort of attack but a smaller publisher would not.

Want to shut down a media outlet that is making you uncomfortable? Simple. Just use that outlet to make some libellous comments about yourself and sue them out of business.

Brenda Power has a good analysis of the issue.

I’m really tempted.

I’ve always found the choreographing aspect of the Northern Ireland peace process a little bit dubious, i.e. the “we’ll read this agreed statement after you read that agreed statement, then the two governments will read this agreed joint statement” etc. but I felt it was probably necessary to drag the grassroots of each side along. I always wondered how the grassroots felt about being patronised in this way. Now I think I know.

With the statement from the chief constable of the PSNI, Hugh Orde and the follow up media interviews from the Taoiseach and the British prime minister relating to the recent bank robbery at Northern Bank in Belfast, I think it is us, the general population, who are the victims of a bit of choreography. The governments are concerned about the rise of Sinn Fein’s popularity and seem to be trying to put a spanner in the works. They also know they’re at a dead end with the peace process, trying to get Sinn Fein and the DUP to agree. They need a distraction.

I don’t know who is responsible for the bank robbery (and I’m guessing the PSNI are coming up a bit short too) but I think it’s an audacious bit of opportunism to drag it into the political domain as it has been.

My main concern relates to the perception of the PSNI as an objective, politically detached organisation. I think that their handling of this affair puts it in doubt and will have long term implications at least as far reaching as if the IRA is proved to be responsible for the robbery.

The PSNI is (supposed to be) accountable to the people. However much we wish it otherwise the IRA are accountable to no-one but themselves.

The things we can control we should do right instead of just fantasising about trying to control the actions of people who are outside our control.

This idea struck me too but I couldn’t find the words to describe it. As usual Tim Burke obliges:

The devastatingly painful stories of individual loss that serve as our collective route into this disaster, that allow us to relate its enormity to our everyday lives, are distinctively modern, a mark of our age. That makes us feel as if catastrophe affects us more, worse, and in a way it does. Not because we build more, or build in the wrong places, or have a flawed relationship to our environment. It affects us more in the 21st Century because of a change in meaning, in sentiment, in consciousness, in the infrastructure of human subjectivity.

Tim Burke