Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
12 — village july 2009
news desk. He had, he said,
important information. “Might be worth a
call,” suggested the deputy editor, handing
over the phone number. The Sunday Trib-
une had been covering the story of the re-
tired Drogheda hospital consultant, Michael
Shine. Progress was minimal. Shine had
been acquitted in Dundalk Circuit Court af-
ter a four-week trial in October on all
charges of sexually abusing his under-age pa-
tients. More charges were lying unactivated
by the DPP while the wealthy doctor was in
the High Court and, next, the Supreme Court
trying to stop the Medical Council investigat-
ing his victims’ complaints. By this time, it
was , years since the garda investiga-
tion had begun in Drogheda. Despair had be-
come part of the story.
Journalists are like fishermen. It’s the one
that got away we remember. Ignoring a possi-
ble lead is akin to a fisherman swimming with
the trout and going home with an empty buck-
et. I dialed the number. He told me his name.
For comprehension sake, let’s call him Judas.
He explained his link with Shine. I realised
I knew this man, Judas. We had chatted as
distant neighbours in the past. He had prob-
ably not known my name then but I knew his
because he was gregarious and talked to eve-
rybody. We arranged to meet.
Over coffee, he nearly wept with rage that
anyone could harm a child. He was messianic
in his abhorrence of child sexual abusers. He
told me a couple of nuggets about Shine. He
promised more significant information would
follow. Everything would be backed up with
documents. We kept in touch by phone. One
day he called and said we should meet again.
This time, he showed me letters. Lots of them.
The information they contained was highly
significant, if the correspondence was authen-
tic. He let me see glimpses. Enough to whet
an appetite. There was data about Shine’s pro-
fessional insurance policy, about a property
portfolio, about an award for his work with
children in India, about moves to have cctv
cameras installed on the apartment block
where he lived, opposite a boys’ school. Ju-
das promised to take the documents away and
photocopy them for me. Before parting, he
mentioned apropos of nothing that two other
journalists in Ireland were interested in ac-
quiring the letters. We arranged to meet in
the same cafe on an agreed day.
That day dawned. Judas phoned. He said
I would have to come to his home. Oh, and
by the way, he added, “Panorama” (the BBC
programme renowned for having standards
higher than the uppermost step on the stair-
way to heaven) had offered stg£, for the
documents. Might the Sunday Tribune’s edi-
tor give him a cheque for € as a “charity”
donation towards some “homeless men I look
after”? Categorically no, I said. I left the of-
fice to meet him on a street mid-way between
his home and the cafe. I told him the Tribune
did not engage in chequebook journalism. If it
was money he was after, he could go elsewhere.
Meekly, he protested that the money was not
for him but for some homeless men he had be-
friended who were sleeping rough in his neigh-
Justine McCarthy
13
“Over coffee, he nearly wept
with rage that anyone
could harm a child. He was
messianic in his abhorrence of
child sexual abusers.”
bourhood. The companies that run newspa-
pers are free to make charitable donations to
any cause, I said, but those donations could
never be as a quid pro quo for a story. It was
out of the question. He backed down. Chas-
tened, he promised to go straight home, pho-
tocopy the material and bring it to the Tribune
office at o’clock the next morning.
Needless to say, I never saw Judas or his doc-
uments again. Somebody else had that pleasure.
As I waited for him in the office the next morning,
I picked up a national newspaper and there, bur-
ied in an inside page, was a story about Michael
Shine and the accolade for his charity work with
disadvantaged children in India. The kindest
conclusion I could reach was that Judas had giv-
en the document to the paper as a freebie in a fit
of pique. I have been told by a colleague from
yet another news organisation that Judas played
the same game with him. He was successful in
acquiring € “to cover his expenses” from at
least one journalist he tapped.
Time was when it was considered beyond
the pale for journalists to pay for stories.
Not any more. These days, it’s regarded as
a shrewd career move. It’s one of the dirtiest
little secrets of our trade. We journalists who
castigate churchmen or doctors or car dealers
for the collegiate omerta that shelters child
abusing priests, a hysterectomy-happy gynae-
cologist and rip-off monopolies are shameless
hypocrites for ignoring the insidious preva-
lence of chequebook journalism.
I sometimes see a fellow journalist (whom
I think of as Dr Jekyll) on television charac-
teristically pontificating and pulpit-thump-
ing about the evil-doers in our society. This
same man once ordered a reporter to offer a
sum of money to a traumatised young wom-
an who went into hiding with her young son
the night her father was jailed for the incest
he commited against her, culminating in the
child’s conception. The reporter had filed a
story, after interviewing the woman on con-
dition she would not be identified, about how
the child had learned that very day that his
grand-father was his father. Dr Jekyll ordered
the reporter to go back to the woman and of-
fer her money to pose for photographs for
the newspaper. Under protest, the reporter
went back to the woman and relayed the offer,
warning that if she accepted it her child’s an-
onymity would be blown and he would carry
that stigma for the rest of his life. The wom-
an did not need telling. She rejected the sick
offer on the spot.
Journalism is competitive. It is still a small
enough sector for most journalists to know one
another. The relative intimacy of the trade cre-
ates a bond of mutually protective silence. Add
to that the revenue-driven motives of commer-
cial media organisations and you have a hot-
house for sharp practice. Circulation boosts
advertising creating bigger profits. A reporter
who buys scoops without a qualm of conscience
is seen as an asset to companies willing to sign
cheques, no questions asked.
Inevitably, it is the most vulnerable who
get hurt. Civilians who get caught up in tu-
multous human-interest stories such as child
abuse, abortion, prostitution, familiacide or
murder can often have contingent money
problems which make them ripe for purchase.
It was reported in “Phoenix” magazine after
the Miss D case in , for instance, that the
Irish Independent paid the year old girl at
the centre of it for an exclusive interview and
photographs. The girl, who was in a loving
relationship with her boyfriend, was four
months pregnant but her baby had anenceph-
aly, a condition preventing the brain from de-
veloping properly. Life after birth would not
be viable. The girl had been prevented by the
Health Service Executive from travelling to
Britain for an abortion. The judge ruled that
the case was not, in fact, about abortion but
about the right to travel. He ruled that she
had that constitutional right. Immediately,
Miss D was faced with the expense of going to
England for an abortion and there was a news-
paper poised to sign the cheque in return for
her right to privacy. Who could say no?
When your ability to earn a living has
been destroyed it is hard to dismiss a bun-
dle of cash waved in your face. Many people
don’t understand the cost of the pay-back un-
til it’s too late. They are the exploited ones.
Those who do the exploiting are often at the
higher end of the wealth chain. As Leonard
Cohen says, rich men have their channels in
poor men’s bedrooms. News organisations
that engage in chequebook journalism tend
to be profitable and don’t be lulled into think-
ing it’s the exclusive preserve of the so-called
red-tops. Often, those who barter with them
in return for filthy lucre are already well off.
Judas, who tried to cash in on the suffering
of hundreds of child abuse victims (nearly
complainants have
now come forward in re-
lation to Shine) enjoyed
the lifestyle of the well-
to-do. During one of our
meetings in the cafe, he
took a call on his phone,
which judging by the con-
versation, seemed to be
from a tenant of his.
Journalists rightly
rail against the prohib-
itive libel laws in this
country. These laws
are outrageous and an-
ti-democratic, designed
to stop information be-
ing validly disseminated
and often manipulated by rich men to bully
the media into submission. Politicians, on the
other hand, obsess about privacy; another le-
gitimate concern, though one that frequently
impinges most damagingly on citiziens with
little influence rather than on the rich and
powerful whom privacy legislation is invari-
ably designed to insulate.
Yet chequebook journalism is seldom men-
tioned. It is a pernicious practice that flour-
ishes on on the principles of free market capi-
talism. I want something. You have it. I’ll buy
it. Never mind that what is being exchanged
is someone’s identity. Never mind that it cor-
rupts the integrity of news fed to the public. I
have never once in years’ membership of
the National Union of Journalists heard the is-
sue discussed at a union meeting. Nor is speci-
fied as part of the remit of the Press Council or
the Press Ombudsman. Is it not strange that
we have laws governing the selling of prosti-
tution services but it’s a free-for-all when it
comes to citizens being seduced into selling
their souls to the devil?
