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

04 Jun 15 | Europe and Central Asia, Ireland, mobile, News and features

(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

15-16 June: Conference on journalists’ safety, media freedom and pluralism in times of conflict

01 Jun 15 | Events, mobile

The past years have been among the deadliest for members of the media. In 2014, 61 journalists lost their lives while reporting from armed conflicts around the world.

Journalists covering conflicts — both international correspondents and local reporters — face grave threats and often risk their own lives to get information out. Their presence is all the more important at a time when information battles and propaganda accompany bombings, explosions and killing.

In 2014, Index on Censorship magazine looked at the new information war between Russia and Ukraine. While propaganda in times of war is nothing new, the amount of content produced and the speed with which it can be disseminated makes it hard to track all lies and expose all fake stories. As a result, disinformation can affect people both on and beyond the battlefield.

Index will be at the conference on journalists’ safety, media freedom and pluralism in times of conflict, hosted by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic. The conference will focus on:

  • Best practices and the development of practical tools on issues of conflict and war reporting
  • ​Journalists’ safety and journalism ethics
  • Measures to deal with propaganda for war and hatred, and the information war
  • Media regulation
  • ​Confidence building measures among journalists from different parties to conflicts​

5 June: Rosewater film screening + Q&A with Maziar Bahari

28 May 15 | Events, mobile

In June 2009, London-based journalist Maziar Bahari returns to his homeland of Iran to report for the BBC on the elections, where, finding himself embroiled in the maelstrom of unrest that follows Ahmadinejad’s victory declaration, he documents the protests from the streets of Tehran. The morning after, he is arrested by the Revolutionary Guard on a charge of treason and incarcerated for 118 days. Based on real events, ROSEWATER achieves a superb balance between the plight of the individual and the wider, ethical and political implications of the story.

This film screening will be followed by a discussion exploring the threats to, and limits of, our right to freedom of expression featuring Maziar Bahari alongside the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre and David Heinemann of Index on Censorship.

When: Friday 5 June 2015, 7.45pm
Where: Broadway Cinema, Nottingham (map)
Tickets: £8. Book here.

Presented in collaboration with the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre and IranWire’s ‘Journalism is not a crime’.

RELATED: Maziar Bahari’s keynote speech at the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards 2010

Pre-vetting broadcast content? That’s what dictatorships do, not democracies

22 May 15 | Campaigns, Europe and Central Asia, mobile, Statements, United Kingdom

Home Secretary Theresa May (Photo: Policy Exchange/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Home Secretary Theresa May (Photo: Policy Exchange/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Britain’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, would — apparently — like to pre-approve programmes before broadcast that may include “extremist” content. We know this thanks to a leaked letter to the prime minister from the former Culture Secretary Sajid Javid who expressed his objection to the plans of his fellow cabinet minister.

Javid pointed out, quite rightly, that such a move could (and would) have a damaging effect on free speech — a freedom that David Cameron himself identified earlier this month as being part of the “British values” he wants to protect (values and freedoms that are systematically being attacked by the current government though proposed measures such as the Snoopers Charter and planned abolition of the Human Rights Act).

The world’s most repressive regimes largely have no need to pre-vet content. This is simply because they control all media outlets, and thus the messaging of the broadcasts and press. Why bother pre-vetting content when you’ve decided everything that goes out in the first place. If you can’t do that, pre-vetting is the next best step for an authoritarian government. China, which has one of the most sophisticated and far-reaching censorship regimes in the world, pre-censors TV documentaries, as well as non-fiction films, and has strict guidelines for broadcasters — including online companies — that forces them to self-censor huge swathes of content. Burma, whose military dictatorship finally ended in 2011, had pre-publication censorship for more than four decades.

As Javid himself notes in his letter: “It should be noted that other countries with a pre-transmission regulatory regime are not known for their compliance with rights relating to freedom of expression and government may not wish to be associated with such regimes.”

Yet with every step Theresa May makes she seems — under the guise of protecting our national security — to be bringing us closer and closer to the practices of countries who restrict the rights of their citizens to speak openly, countries who spy on their people indiscriminately, and countries who issue vague and obscure directives about the kinds of people and opinions deemed “unacceptable”.

We already have plenty of laws in Britain dealing with incitement to violence and the promotion of terrorism. We also have strict broadcasting rules addressing these areas. But the idea that the government should have a role in assessing content before it is broadcast, or in developing lists of speakers banned, not for inciting violence or hatred, but because their ideas are extreme, should set alarm bells ringing.

This article was posted on 22 May 2015 at indexoncensorship.org