Four men appeared in court in Northern Ireland on 16 September to face charges relating to the 2001 murder of Sunday World journalist Martin O’Hagan.
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Gay sex, moral crusades and Desperate Dan: the Mayo Echo row has it all, writes Joseph Sexton
A popular community-based website in the west of Ireland was forced to cease operating last week in the fallout that followed the publication of an inflammatory article in a local newpaper attacking alleged gay ‘perverts’.
The article, penned by Tony Geraghty, editor and proprietor of local freesheet, the Mayo Echo, provoked widespread debate on Irish web forums. This quite startling front-page article, which reads like a bad Onion spoof, told the story of a recreational area in Castlebar, Co Mayo being transformed into a latter day Sodom, with hundreds of men visiting on a weekly basis to have anonymous sex with strangers, propositioning young boys, and getting their rocks off whilst thumbing through children’s magazines. Perhaps most horrifying, the article described ‘drooling perverts getting off whilst watching children’ playing at an adjacent playground.
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Ireland’s new media watchdog will itself be under severe scrutiny, writes Michael Foley
It was a long time coming, but after debates going back to the 1970s, Ireland has finally joined the rest of Europe and has established a press council, which opened for business in January.
The new press ombudsman, Professor John Horgan, and the 13-person press council opened their city centre premises in Dublin following a launch addressed by Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan. At the launch, the minister announced that privacy legislation, which has been approved by the cabinet, would be parked, “in order to allow the press council the opportunity to prove its effectiveness in defending the right to privacy from unwarranted intrusion by the media.”
He continued: “I don’t think I am breaching any state secrets when I tell you that not all my colleagues had boundless enthusiasm for this approach. I would not for a moment dismiss their reservations and, indeed, concern about media intrusion is not exclusive to those of us involved in politics.”
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