Irish ping
Posted on 08/15/2006 4:03:22 PM PDT by markomalley
An agency of the Irish Bishops Conference has warned that it will not hesitate in raising complaints if the Catholic Church is subjected to inaccurate comments in the media.
The move comes after the editor of the Irish Daily Star, the second biggest selling newspaper in Ireland, made what were described as 'exaggerated' comments about the Church on RTE's Prime Time programme.
Martin Long, director of the Catholic Communications Office, said his office would be proactive in monitoring statements made about the Church in future. During a discussion about privacy and the media, Irish Daily Star editor Gerard Colleran – who is in favour of relaxing Ireland’s privacy laws – said: "We had too much privacy in this country.
"We should have had less privacy in respect of clerical abuse of children, when they were screaming in every presbytery in the country."
Mr Long, in a complaint to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC), said the comments had hurt many people, both lay and religious.
"These words were false, slanderous and amount to an allegation against every parish-based priest in the country," he said.
"A presbytery is both a place of work and home for priests and the running of presbyteries is very much reliant on the support of lay people from the parish. The media has a special responsibility and while it has, in the past, undertaken a commendable role in highlighting the awfulness of child abuse, media representatives ought not to use this issue to distress those innocent of any wrongdoing."
The BCC rejected Mr Long’s complaint, saying that although child abuse was a serious issue which should be dealt with in a fair and balanced manner, the statement was made on a live discussion programme and the presenter could not have foreseen it.
The commission also concluded that Mr Colleran had spoken in an exaggerated manner and his comments were not intended to have caused offence.
However Mr Long told The Universe that although the complaint had been rejected, the process had been "a useful exercise."
"We believe that the fact we took this course of action gives a clear signal that the CCO will be proactive in relation to the monitoring of similar such comments in the future," he added.
"Just because the judgement was turned down won’t deter us from taking the action again. There was an acknowledgement by RTE that they did not agree with the comments which were made during the programme and there was also an acknowledgement by Gerard Colleran that he had exaggerated the point."
Irish ping
The move comes after the editor of the Irish Daily Star, the second biggest selling newspaper in Ireland, made what were described as 'exaggerated' comments about the Church on RTE's Prime Time programme.
Nice to see someone is standing up to RTE bias!
More liberal bias?
These people have to be stopped.
RTE is particularly biased when it comes to SFIRA - it's basically a puppet of the Army Council!
RTE is the State broadcaster, SFIRA = Sinn Fein/IRA.
Ping.
Yeah, it's the same as CBC, or the BBC in Britain.
I call them bastards!
Seditious, subversive, hibernofascist bastards...
An Irishman should found an oil company called Canuck Oil!! :P
When you come from the Diocese of Ferns, it's hard to find offence in Gerry Colleran's comments on Prime Time...no matter how exaggerated.
It is when you come from the Diocese of Tuam! :P
But, I can understand how you feel, you mentioned your journalistic involvement in the Ferns scandals before.
No doubt, however, that radical secularists in RTE will use the crimes of a tiny minority of priests to tar the entire clergy with.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.