Morality on a Sliding Scale

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Friday September 29, 2006 15:20 by Miriam Cotton

Village Editor's strange affliction

Vincent Browne's strange affliction with trying to find jusitifications for the likes of Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern seems now to have infected recently appointed columnist Chekov Feeney - also a member of the Indymedia.ie editorial collective. Feeney's Newspaper Watch column has, while throwing a welcome spotlight on many examples of media bias and seeming self-censorship -and is apparently unique in Ireland in its objective - sometimes failed to deliver truly well aimed punches at obviously deserving targets.

In this week's edition of Village, Chekov Feeney writes:

"Vincent Browne , writing in the Sunday Business Post, argued that there would be 'nothing wrong with Ahern accepting financial assistance from friends' and that the 'phoney crisis' was diverting attention from 'far more substantial' issues regarding certain payments to Fianna Fail by property developers."

At this point the reader could be well forgiven for thinking that Feeny is about to puncture a big hole in that manifestly nonsensical argument from Browne. In the light of every controversy, tribunal and corruption scandal that has dogged the state for the better part of two decades now, it is howlingly bizarre for Browne to strike up this pose. Ahern is the Taoiseach for God's sakes! And he has accepted what is a substantial sum of money to most people in circumstances which he himself has declared ought never to arise for any politician, and from benefactors quite a few of whom were subsequently promoted to positions of influence because 'they were my friends' in Ahern's own words.

It's difficult, then, to master the incredulity which arises from the conclusion that Feeney follows up with, instead:

Although it would be nice to live in a society where the media ensured that holders of public office were rigorously insulated from private influences which might bias their decisions, we do not live in anything remotely appraoching such a society. As Browne pointed out, the media outcry was completely disporprotionalte when compared to the lack of outrage at the routine payments of much larger sums to political parties.

So that's alright then - as they would say in Private Eye. What's a few quid between friends, eh? I'll see you alright, dont worry guys.

Now it may or may not be significant that Browne is of course the editor of Village in which Feeney's column lives. Browne himself has since seemed to row back from the position quoted by Feeney above. But it is nevertheless a strange business that Browne should ever have made that argument -even in the light of what he knew before last week's edition of Village went to press. And Feeney may well in any case be right to wonder whether Bertiegate is a response from McDowell friendly media to FF plans for a privacy law. No doubt there are all kinds of dirty dealings going on behind the scenes - knives in backs all over Leinster House etc. And no doubt this new information was not new to many people - possibly stored for use at just the right killer moment - a timely reminder to Ahern of just who is running this country (an unholy alliance of the PDs/the press/and IBEC people). That's another serious issue and worthy of close scrutiny itself - it shouldn't be overlooked in the affair.

But the fact remains, surely, that what Ahern did was plain wrong, it is a resignation issue and it is a sign of how far this country has slid into moral pusillanimity that political rectitude is now seen as a matter of degree rather than of principle. We may not have the means necessary to guarantee that politicians live up to expectations in every instance but the most effective thing we can do is to respond appropriately when they are discovered to have behaved improperly. The precedent that used to exist needs to be firmly re-established and the issue of eliminating corruption is not helped when commentators and politicians respond instead by saying 'Ah, sure, it wasnt as bad as it could have been, now was it?' That outlook is fatal to us all. Any person, journalist, commentator, politician - anyone who cares about seeing corruption off - might as well pack up, go home and look to their own interests if that is the non-rule to which we are now working.