How dangerous is it to be a journalist in Ireland 20 years after the murder of Veronica Guerin?

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Monument to Veronica Guerin in Dublin Castle gardens. Credit: William Murphy / Flickr

This weekend marks 20 years since the murder of Irish award-winning crime and investigative journalist Veronica Guerin. On 26 June 1996, two masked men on a motorbike pulled up alongside her car at traffic lights on the outskirts of Dublin, opened fire and killed her instantly. Three men were subsequently convicted for their involvement in the murder.

Guerin, who had been working as a freelance journalist for Ireland’s Sunday Independent, made a name for herself investigating and exposing the crimes of senior members of Dublin’s criminal underworld. But such a reputation can be a dangerous thing for an investigative reporter to have. Guerin was subject to a number of attacks and threats, including against the life of her young son Cathal. In 1995 she was shot in her home but survived. Refusing to yield, she continued her work.

“Veronica was a late entrant to journalism; she trained and worked initially in accountancy so she had an instinct for business and understood money,” says Séamus Dooley, Irish Secretary, National Union of Journalists. “That was very useful in studying records and following the money.”

Her death prompted a wave of public anger culminating in the establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau, followed by more than 150 arrests and a major hunt for organised criminal gangs. “The idea of a designated bureau with sweeping powers to target those with suspicious wealth was a direct response to her murder and caused havoc among those heading criminal gangs,” says Dooley.

Guerin’s death was described by then-Taoiseach John Bruton as a “an attack on democracy”. Unfortunately, this sentiment was echoed earlier this year when current Taoiseach Enda Kenny said: “Journalists and media organisations will not be intimidated by such threats, which have no place in a democratic society.”

The threats he was referring to were made in February 2016 by criminal gangs in Dublin against a number of crime journalists in the city who were reporting on a gangland feud that saw two audacious murders in the space of four days. Police informed Independent News and Media, which owns the Irish Independent newspaper, that the safety of two reporters — a man and a woman — was at risk.

Jimmy Guerin, the brother of Veronica, said at the time: “Successive governments have let down the memory of Veronica … by failing to provide the resources required to beat the gangs.”

So are we back to the way things were two decades ago?

“The situation has been simmering beneath the surface for a while, but the turf wars between the Kinahan and the Hutch families, along with the nature of the violence, is new,” says Dooley. “Gerry Hutch is someone Veronica would have covered in her time, so there is a direct connection with what came before.”

“However, there was this perception that Dublin was a city on lockdown following the killings and journalists are operating under fear,” adds Dooley. “This isn’t bandit country, and there aren’t large numbers of journalists fearful for their lives.”

This shouldn’t mean complacency, adds Dooley, who states that the NUJ has supported a number of journalists at risk in Ireland in recent years.

“One of the problems is that Dublin is a small city, so, naturally, the number of people covering crime is very small,” says Dooley. “Veronica was very well-known to the people she was writing about and so are today’s reporters.”

With crime reporting being such a small part of the market, there is great pressure to deliver stories quicker, which brings problems in itself.

“Today’s journalists are expected to take more risks, and freelancers — as Veronica was — take even greater risks than those in staff jobs,” says Dooley. “While I understand that there is also the commercial element of selling newspapers in order to survive, sensationalising crime coverage in such a high profile way and being overly provocative in the process of selling comes at a price.”

A similar situation exists in Northern Ireland, which remains a difficult place to be a journalist. In September 2001, Martin O’Hagan, a journalist with the Sunday World, became the first journalist to be killed in Northern Ireland since the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969. He was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries as he walked home from a pub in Lurgan, in what was widely believed to be retaliation for his investigations into drug dealing by these same gangs.

His murder remains an isolated case, but recent years have seen a spate of attacks and threats against journalists in the country. In 2014, Irish News reporter Allison Morris was called a “Fenian bastard” and a “Fenian cunt” as she left court by a gang who threatened to cut her throat.

In July the previous year, the NUJ condemned the “upward trend” in attacks on journalists in Northern Ireland after a French photographer was assaulted during rioting in East Belfast. Two months earlier death threats were issued by loyalist paramilitaries against two journalists in the region. Dissident republicans have made similar threats in recent years.

These are not isolated incidents in either the north or south of Ireland.

If we are to learn anything from the death of Veronica Guerin all these years later, says Dooley, it is that “there needs to be greater recognition of the rights of journalists.”

Padraig Reidy: “Denis O’Brien to sue everyone”

(Photo: ITU/M.Jacobson-Gonzalez/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien (Photo: ITU/M.Jacobson-Gonzalez/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Denis O’Brien, Ireland’s richest media mogul and owner of the country’s largest newspaper group, had a satire malfunction last week when his solicitors, Meaghers, pursued up-and-coming satirical website Waterford Whispers.

The site, known as WWN, had published a fictional story about a parallel universe in which the tycoon had been convicted of white collar crime. The editors soon received a letter stating that “references to a ‘parallel universe’ are a sham”, and that the lawyers had instructions to take “all necessary steps to vindicate their client’s good name and reputation.”

Scary stuff for a fledgling operation. Editor Colm Williamson, faced with the wrath of O’Brien, understandably took the post down.

Then, political site Broadsheet.ie reported the threat to Waterford Whispers, including a screengrab of the original article. So, they, too, got a letter from Meaghers, as did their web hosting company, hostingireland.ie.

For all that, it would be wrong to characterise this as simply a rich and powerful man going after innocent upstart startups. That would be to denigrate O’Brien unfairly. For he is equally at home pursuing the parliament and the national broadcaster as he is pursuing people who write jokes.

As previously reported by this column, O’Brien took umbrage when an independent TD, Catherine Murphy, raised allegations over his business finances in the chamber of the Dáil. O’Brien got an injunction against RTE, the state broadcaster, from reporting the comments, in spite of the fact that, as Murphy enjoyed parliamentary privilege, her comments were available on the Oireachtas (parliament) website.

The Dáil’s Committee on Procedure and Privileges subsequently found that Murphy had not abused her parliamentary privilege, and that it could not rule on the veracity of her comments.

It emerged earlier this month that O’Brien is taking legal action against the committee protesting that decision. He is also taking legal action against the state: He is suing the country over comments made in parliament. Where the hell does satire go from here?

The answer is that satire has never had the most comfortable existence in Ireland, in spite of all our Swifts and Wildes and Becketts and O’Briens.

While we may be a people noted for our sense of humour, we’re deadly serious when it comes to ourselves. O’Brien, a man richer than Oprah, or Donald Trump for that matter, portrays himself throughout these proceedings as the innocent assailed on all sides. He is a citizen making a stand for all that is good and holy in a wicked world.

He, a decent man, a patriot no less, a man who volunteered to pay the wages of the national football team, is assailed by gombeens, ingrates and begrudgers who will do everything in their power to keep a good man down. These forces may take the form of the state or a small website. It doesn’t matter. What matters is there are external forces trying to destroy us. It’s probably a post-colonial thing. We can usually blame that.

But whatever the psychology behind it, O’Brien has engaged a scattergun assault on free speech. It’s fascinating to watch, as he turns one Waterford Whispers spoof story into a near-prophecy.

“Denis O’Brien To Sue Everyone”, read one Waterford Whispers headline in May of this year. “We’re particularly targeting people who have had negative thoughts about Denis in their head but have never uttered them in a public forum,” a fake solicitor was fictitiously quoted as saying in the entirely made up story.

And now? Well we haven’t reached that stage yet, but being honest, one does think twice about writing about Denis O’Brien. And this is only vague trepidation about covering publicly known libel threats. One wonders if editors on struggling titles will really have the stomach for sending a hack out to do some serious muckraking. That is not to suggest that anything will be found — simply that you don’t know until you look. That’s how journalism works.

That O’Brien makes a large part of his money from newspapers, radio and mobile phone communications bears repeating. The free exchange of information is his business. Perhaps he should show a little more respect to the principle and the practice.

This column was posted on 14 August 2015 at indexoncensorship.org

Padraig Reidy: Denis O’Brien, parliamentary privilege and the public interest

(Photo: ITU/M.Jacobson-Gonzalez/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien (Photo: ITU/M.Jacobson-Gonzalez/Flickr/Creative Commons)

“Where would we be in Ireland if four million people had to make public all their banking relationships?” tycoon Denis O’Brien asked in an Irish Times opinion piece last week. It is a more interesting question than I suspect O’Brien meant it to be. The Irish economy suffered heavily from the nods, winks, strokes carried on behind closed doors throughout the 90s and 2000s, and perhaps a little more transparency, a touch more daylight shed on banking matters, would have been for the good.

O’Brien, owner of a large central plain of Ireland’s media landscape, was writing for one of the newspapers he didn’t own amidst a controversy surrounding his own private banking relationships, specifically his relationship with the state-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC).

Independent TD Catherine Murphy had made allegations in the parliamentary chamber regarding the interest rate Mr O’Brien had been given on a €500m loan from IBRC. The loan related to the purchase of Siteserv, a major recycling firm.

O’Brien, on learning about Murphy’s remarks, apparently while breakfasting in Haiti, was incensed by what he saw as a blatant breach of privacy, and immediately instructed his lawyers to seek an injunction on the reporting of the Dáil speech, which they duly won. “It was one of those nanosecond decisions,” O’Brien wrote, in an article brimming with indignation. Those who criticised the injunction were engaged in nothing less that a witch hunt: “I have never experienced the level of abuse, venom and hatred resulting from taking a stand to protect privacy in relation to my financial affairs.” He then signed off, oddly: “I will always be proud to be Irish, optimistic and a republican with a small ‘r’.” Good to know, Denis.

Actually, that last statement is worth looking at: in spite of it all, in spite of all the slings and arrows, in spite of the insufferability of this stupid, petty, greasy-till fumbling little country, O’Brien will not abandon Ireland. He is proud, he is optimistic, he is a republican, but not too republican. We are lucky to have him.

This language was echoed by his spokesman James Morrissey, who told RTE’s Keelin Shanley that, frankly we were lucky to have O’Brien. “I think it’s important to mention, and it would be a celebratory fact if it was an IDA-backed [state-assisted] company, but Denis O’Brien employs in and around 10,000 people both directly and indirectly in this country and he’s entitled to invest and he’s entitled to have his leading bid for a company accepted.”

In Ireland, you see, wealth and employment are articles of faith, and they should not be questioned lest they melt into air.

I am not even going to attempt to get into the exact details of O’Brien’s finances. The injunction on reporting was “clarified” earlier this week, and as a result, you can now read articles such as this one on The Journal, which was removed after the injunction was initially granted, reporting on Murphy’s speech.

No, these are not the business pages and others will report on the ins and outs better than I. What concerns us here are two factors: parliamentary privilege, and the public interest.

First of all, parliamentary privilege: that is, the right to speak without hindrance in parliament, and the right for the press to report what is said in parliament.

While O’Brien’s spokesman Morrissey may have dismissed the Dáil as a “talking club”, it’s absolutely crucial to a democracy that elected representatives can make their representations fearlessly. Lord knows it doesn’t happen enough, but we should be encouraging it.

Almost six years ago in Britain, in an important moment for the free press, democracy and justice, The Guardian took on metals and energy company Trafigura when it attempted to stifle reporting of an internal document on a waste spill. On that occasion, Carter-Ruck attempted to stop the papers from reporting a parliamentary question from Paul Farrelly MP on the issue. Trafigura and its lawyers backed down on their injunction just hours before The Guardian was due to appeal. It was an important moment, not just in upholding the principle of parliamentary privilege, but also in proving its worth (it should be noted that some idiotic things can also be done under the mantle of parliamentary privilege, but the good rather outweighs the bad).

Returning to present-day Ireland, here’s the transcript where O’Brien’s spokesman called the nation’s parliament a “talking club”:

Shanley: [W]hat relevance is it how many people [O’ Brien] employs in this country? I mean we’re talking here about press freedom. We’re talking about somebody with huge power, who owns half of the media and is preventing the other half from reporting…”

Morrissey: “No I think you’re missing my point. I was just saying when [opposition parliamentarian] Billy Kelleher talks about powerful people. A powerful person has the same rights as a person who’s not powerful and that is a democratic right to their good name and reputation and not to have it sullied in the Dáil. And I think, to be brutally blunt about it, the Dáil is a bit of a talking club. They want their own rules for themselves and I think, to be fair, it’s important that people stand up for democracy inside the Dáil, as well as outside the Dáil because that’s the basis on which they get elected.”

Note here that democracy is whatever you want it to be at that particular time: and the things you do not want can be undemocratic. Note the spokesman for the nation’s wealthiest person making an appeal to the common man against the political class. O’Brien, his spokesman is saying, is an ordinary man with the same rights as the rest of us.

But here’s the question of public interest: is he? Clearly, he has more money than us. And because of that, he has more influence than us. O’Brien, he of the 10,000 jobs, is very, very important. There is, it would appear to me, an obvious difference between him getting a €500m loan from a state bank, and you or I getting a €50,000 small business loan. O’Brien cannot be in the same breath this great important job creator and media mogul, and just a humble man who can enjoy absolute privacy.

The price, perhaps of the privilege O’Brien enjoys with his fortune is our privilege to know what he’s doing with it.

This column was posted on 4 June 2015 at indexoncensorship.org

Padraig Reidy: Stop saying this isn’t a “free speech issue”. It is.

In the mid-80s, advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi made a short film for Index on Censorship. Starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role, The Censor, written by Ivan Kraus, depicted a dancer being ordered about by a commissar who repeatedly tells her what movements she is forbidden from making. When she finally comes to a standstill the censor demands of her: “Why aren’t you dancing? You call that a dance?”

In a pleasing irony, the film, intended as a cinema advert, never made it to screens as it was deemed “too political”.

I was reminded of this earlier in the week when I read about activist Maryam Namazie’s clash with Trinity College Dublin’s Society For International Affairs (SoFIA). Namazie claims that conditions were placed on her speaking at an event, in particular the imposition of a “moderator” in the form of Dr Andrew Pierce, an assistant professor in Ecumenics at TCD.

I don’t know Dr Pierce, or his work, so have no reason to doubt that he would be a perfectly fine moderator.

I do know Maryam Namazie, having moved in roughly the same atheist/secular/free speechy circles, and I’m not sure that she is very much into the idea of Ecumenics or being moderated.

Maryam Namazie is a refugee from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her political education came in the Worker-communist Party of Iran, a group that does not spend a lot of time on “interfaith dialogue”. She retains a deep-seated anti-clericalism which has not so much gone missing from the British hard left, as never really existed (with the exception of libertarian communist/anarchist circles). She’s not into “interfaith”.

Maryam Namazie (Photo: Peter/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Maryam Namazie (Photo: Peter/Flickr/Creative Commons)

You can see why, as SoFIA speakers are normally not moderated, Namazie would not tolerate this exception. Like the dancer in the film, she felt so constrained by conditions that she could not continue. You can also see why SoFIA would imagine this as unreasonable, and cast it as so.

So has Maryam been prevented from speaking at TCD or not? Is this, as people like to ask “a free speech issue”?

The answers are: yes and no, and yes.

To the first question: yes and no. Yes, as she has been prevented from speaking under the terms she originally agreed to. Namazie clearly feels that the imposition of “moderation” will by its nature stifle her. And no, because, technically, the only person to actually prevent her from speaking was herself. It was she who pulled the plug.

Is this a “free speech issue”? Well yes. There are few more irritating arguments than “it’s not a free speech issue”.

This statement is usually backed up by the following arguments:

  1. “X is against the law.” And? Resorting to the fact that something is illegal is to run away from an argument, not to win it. There are all sorts of bad laws, as anyone who has ever so much as signed a petition to change one has acknowledged. If you cannot form an argument as to whether someone should or should not do something without recourse to existing laws, you probably need to work a bit harder on it.

  2. “Not compatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights/Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” See above. Legalistic arguments are for lawyers.

  3. “This is an abuse of free speech”. Because you can only use your rights for the purposes I wish them to be used for. That’s how rights work.

  4. “No one has a right to a platform.” This is absolutely true. However, the flip side of that is that clubs, societies etc have a right to invite the speakers and guests they choose. Every so often, the Oxford Union, or a university debating or philosophy society, will invite a fascist or a Holocaust revisionist to discuss “free speech” and its limits. It’s a dull trick, made even duller by the reaction of United Against Fascism/Socialist Workers Party student activists who will attempt to shut the talk down. (And, yes, before there are letters, you have every right to try to get something shut down. Yes, that is exercising your free speech, until you storm the hall. Then you’re using force).

  5. “We’re not saying she can’t speak: just that she can’t speak here.” See above.

  6. “You wouldn’t get away with that in X country (usually Saudi Arabia, Russia or China).” No, you wouldn’t. Why you want to compare the free world with regimes like that, I’ve no idea, but we should be glad that people “get away with” saying more in democracies than they do in autocracies.

  7. “Free speech does not mean the ability to say X.” Nah, sorry. It definitely does.

And on it goes. The problem is that these caveats always apply to things that are, obviously so, free speech issues. But — and this is probably a good thing — nobody wants to be seen as against free speech (though it was amusing to see the format of the various censorious motions brought at the National Union of Students’ Women’s Conference this week: “Motion to Condemn XXXXphobia on campus. Speech for: NUS XXXX Society. Speech Against: Free”).

One wishes sometimes we could be more honest. Don’t say “this isn’t a free speech issue”, rather “this is a free speech issue, and I’m OK with this amount of censorship, for this reason.” Then we can talk.

This article was posted on 26 March 2015 at indexoncensorship.org