RTÉ still has questions to answer about its defamation of Fr Kevin Reynolds. By Vincent Browne.

In March or April of this year, a person approached RTE with sensational claims concerning a priest of the Mill Hill Missionaries, Fr Kevin Reynolds, who had been a missionary in Kenya from 1971 to 2004 and who was then parish priest of Ahascragh, Co Galway.

It seems that the person approached was the journalist Aoife Kavanagh, a Morning Ireland presenter who also worked with Prime Time.

The Press Ombudsman has upheld a complaint against the Sunday Independent over an article by Jim Cusack about the women at the centre of the Corrib garda “rape” recording. He has found that the article was “significantly misleading” and that it reported rumour as fact.

The complaint was brought by Jerrie Ann Sullivan, one of the two protesters whose arrest in Mayo on 31 March 2011 led to a garda sergeant and his colleagues accidentally recording themselves with a digital video camera. During the conversation, they talked about threatening to rape one of the women in their custody.

Press regulation, far from being a dangerous imposition, is crucial for a properly functioning democracy, writes Steven Lydon. 

Bertie Ahern recently described the Irish media as “incompetent” for not preventing Ireland’s economic crisis.

Ahern might be confused regarding the role of the press, but he is right to recognise its importance.

Pat Rabbitte has indicated that Denis O'Brien will be stopped in his tracks if he attempts to expand his media empire here, but INM already controls far too much of the Irish media. By Vincent Browne.

Pat Rabbitte has offered interesting insights into the present Government’s plans for new legislation on media ownership, expressing concern for the concentration of ownership across media sectors.

The target was Denis O’Brien and/or anybody aiming for as much media control as he has acquired or as he hopes to acquire. And before I go further I must declare several interests.

The debased media culture that Rupert Murdoch did so much to create - one obsessed with trivia and matters of negligible public interest - has been imported here in spades. By Vincent Browne.

Fifteen years ago, executives of companies controlled by Tony O’Reilly, the then controlling shareholder in Independent News and Media (INM), had a meeting with officials working for the then taoiseach, John Bruton.

At that meeting, the INM people made it clear that, unless Bruton’s Rainbow government acceded to O’Reilly’s demands on the MMDS television transmission system, it would lose the Independent Newspaper Group "as friends’’.

Angela Long used to see Rupert Murdoch shuffling around Wapping in his home-knitted jumpers. That was before ethics went to hell in his newspapers (and his latest wife smartened up his attire). But this is serious...it's about society and democracy

Bliss was it to be alive in that ....afternoon in July, sitting in front of the telly, pot of tea, watching something I never, ever, thought we'd see: Rupert Murdoch in the dock.

That was really the biggest shock of the day, an afternoon of changeable weather in London, with one miniature storm in the Wilson Committee Room when a small-time blogger attempted to smear a fake cream-pie on the aged Murdoch's face.

But that Murdoch, the anti-Christ, for so long, according to a sizeable constituency, the Dark Lord of media misbehaviour, was being held to account – it was amazing.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the News of the World’s final issue on 10 July was its prominent use of a quotation by George Orwell. By Richard Lance Keeble. 

In full, the quote - which appeared on the back page and again as the opening paragraph in the page three editorial - reads:

"It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World."

'Freedom of the press' means more than just freedom from censorship or government interference; it means freedom from the constraints and limitations of a thoroughly corporate culture, writes Natalie Fenton.

You can arrest Andy Coulson, you can sack two hundred journalists and take the News of the World off the face of the earth, but the problem won’t go away. News is in crisis, but believing that it is a crisis stemming from the lies, deceitfulness and illegality of hacking is misplaced.

Understanding the roots of the crisis may need political analysis of the kind Gerry Hassan provides; it may point to fascinating contradictions in conservatism itself as Will Davies argues; it may in part be due to the baleful responsibility of Rupert Murdoch and his son as Anthony Barnett asserts, but it also requires a critical interrogation of the terms on which newspapers in the UK operate.