THERE are times when you wonder if this is the right line of work to be in. Maybe it's the fact that it's a small country and we all think that we know each other well. Whatever the reason, there are few things more unseemly than the spectacle of journalists squabbling, and there's been a hell of a lot of it going on in recent years. The mud-slinging which has surrounded the impending publication of Emily O'Reilly's book about Veronica Guerin is just the latest and most intense example of a malaise which is rapidly coming to characterise the Irish journalistic milieu.
Veronica Guerin was murdered. She is, therefore, not in any position to defend herself against criticism. Precisely because she is dead, things can be said about her which might result in a libel action if she were alive. And so people who genuinely knew Veronica and who cared for her inevitably feel that they have to defend her reputation in her absence.
I don't believe, however, that this fully explains the extent of the hostility which is currently being directed at Emily O'Reilly.
There is a view that you should not speak ill of the dead, and I can sympathise with it up to a point. But I also understand the fascination which the story of Veronica Guerin's emergence as one of Ireland's best known journalists and her brutal murder holds for other writers, and for Emily O'Reilly in particular.
Emily is a fine writer and a good journalist - one of the best in the country. She is genuinely concerned about journalistic standards and the impact of the near-monopoly position enjoyed by Independent Newspapers here on them. In some ways, she probably saw the murder of Veronica Guerin, and the hypocrisy of the reaction from particular quarters to what was an appalling, criminal act, as a kind of parable. Veronica Guerin was gunned down in cold blood by irredeemably callous, murdering thugs. But what were the forces that placed her - or that allowed her to place herself - in the firing line?
Like most other people who have been writing about it, I haven't read Emily's book. I don't know how well-judged it is or how it balances the inevitable questions raised about Veronica Guerin's journalistic techniques. But it is important to acknowledge that these questions are vital if the implications of the murder of Veronica Guerin are to be adequately addressed by journalists and newspapers.
It is not an exercise in muck-racking to ask whether or not things might have been managed differently, and in a way which exposed Veronica less to the risk of violence. Nor is it an exercise in muck-racking to ask whether or not Veronica's own singular approach to crime reporting left her too vulnerable to the people whose crimes and misdemeanours she was reporting on. Other young reporters are likely to be inspired by Veronica Guerin's legacy and her reputation. Is it not valid to analyse the tragedy that came to pass, the better to equip newcomers to the trade to make their way through the minefield of crime reporting and still produce great work?
Of course the tone of Emily's book will be all-important, and the extent to which she balances whatever criticisms are raised with an appreciation of Veronica Guerin's very real achievements.
Too many journalists haven't waited to see just how much of a "deconstruction" Emily O'Reilly has in fact attempted, before rushing to judgement. I am not saying that she should be immune from criticism, any more than Veronica Guerin should. But the attacks on her have a choreographed flavour, giving rise to a disturbing sense that some at least of her colleagues in the profession have set out to destroy her reputation before the book is ever published.
I have a lot of sympathy with Veronica's husband Graham Turley, her son Cathal and the immediate members of her family. Their instinct is to protect, in every way they can, Veronica's reputation and her memory. And they have a right to feel that they should at least have been asked to tell the Veronica Guerin story from their perspective. But the venom of some of her other defenders has a curiously hollow ring. One thing's for sure: it wouldn't have been Veronica Guerin's style.
Biographies are a difficult business. The truth is that you can never know the half of it and if you get the wrong half, you can do someone a terrible injustice. Which is why I have such a mistrust personally of the kind of knowing profiles newspapers frequently run about people in public life. But if you are going down that difficult road, you owe it to the people you are taking the liberty of writing about to try and at least to speak to those closest to them and who generally know them (or in the case of Veronica Guerin knew her) best.
Maybe the book that Emily O'Reilly really wanted to write was about the Sunday Independent and in her zeal to say things that she passionately believes need to be said about that institution she was less rigorous in her research about Veronica Guerin than she might otherwise have been. Maybe, equally, what she says about Veronica isn't so terrible when it's read in the context of the book itself. And maybe, finally, The Life And Death Of A Crime Reporter will make a real and significant contribution to the necessary debate about journalistic ethics in Ireland.
Maybe. But is it all worth it? Worth the risk of hurting people close to Veronica Guerin, who loved her? Worth putting yourself in the firing line for every two-bit hack, and some sincere ones too, to take a potshot at you?
I'm sure it's a question Emily O'Reilly has been asking herself in recent weeks - and that she'll still be asking it in a few months time.
* Niall Stokes
Editor