Easy way out

“They huffed and puffed for the benefit of the media, so that we would report how upset they were”

Speaker's Corner
Denise Horan

ON top of the normal decisions and challenges that come with the production of a weekly newspaper, occasionally a curve ball gets thrown your way. A dilemma that, really, you shouldn’t have to deal with. But it’s landed in front of you and you have to.
One such dilemma wound its way to my desk last week. It was a report by one of our journalists from a Westport Town Council meeting, at which a lengthy discussion took place about an article that had appeared in another publication in this county a month previously.
It was a news story for us in the sense that it emanated from a meeting and some of the comments made were strong in nature and thus newsworthy and of interest to our readers. Where the dilemma arose for me is that I believed the discussion was an abuse of the privilege of the Council chamber and I believed that rather than take decisive action themselves, the councillors and officials chose to use the other media organs in the county to gain retribution of sorts.
I will not use this forum to give my views on the content of the article that appeared about the Westport Leisure Park and its management – because that would be an abuse by me of what this forum is intended for. The members in the Westport Town Council chamber last week had no such hesitation. They held very strong views and they didn’t hold back in expressing them. Terms like ‘total lies’, ‘so-called paper’, ‘appalling writing’ and ‘ludicrous’ were used variously in relation to the article and those who wrote it.
Their outrage may have been genuine, but the way they chose to articulate it made it seem cowardly and hollow. Having had a month to consider what was written, the best they could do was come in to the chamber and offer a few indignant sentences about the injustice of what was done to the Leisure Park and its manager, Dermott Langan. Shielded, legally, by the qualified privilege that the Council chamber offers them.
How many of them wrote to Dermott Langan to express their solidarity with him on reading the article? How many of them wrote to the person responsible for the publication in which the article was printed to demand an apology or, at the very least, to express their disgust? I don’t know, but hazarding a guess, I would say very few.
Having had a month to consider the matter, how many came into the chamber last week with any kind of proposal on the matter? One. Cllr Peter Flynn, who said ‘further action should be taken’. But no motion was passed or decision made. Did anyone suggest issuing a public statement on the matter on behalf of the elected members and/or officials? Not as far as our reporter heard.
The other option, of course, was to ignore the matter completely. If the publication in which the article appeared was so contemptible to them, why dignify its contents with any discussion. Cllr Tereasa McGuire did make this point, saying the article didn’t merit a response.
In general though, they huffed and puffed for the benefit of the media members present, so that we would let the world know how upset they were at what had happened and save them having to do anything else.
It is not my place to tell elected members of any Council, or its officials, how to conduct their business. I admire them all for what they do and respect the differing roles they play. But if an injustice is perceived to be so appalling that it has damaged the reputation of an institution or organisation, then it seems to me – without having spent the last month considering it – that there are more dignified and appropriate ways for its guardians to address it than to have a giving-out session at a public meeting.
Maybe I was wrong to publish the report last week. But the point is it is a decision with which I shouldn’t have been faced. It wasn’t The Mayo News’s battle to fight.