Mary Lou MacDonald suing RTE

ROFL.

Haul out all the emotive cases you want blanch.

Just shows you have a selective approach to rights and who may avail of them. Reminds of a certain ideology in the north of the island and the similarity of your ideology.

Ask yourself here blanch, if you publicly claim that somebody is a criminal and guilty of a crime and should be treated as such, when there has been no conviction, what will happen to you? Do you believe people (all of them) have a right to protections in law from that or not? Do you want the right to find guilty on foot of an allegation as you selectively do?

You can be of the opinion somebody is guilty all you want, who cares what you or I believe at the end of the day. But you CANNOT deprive somebody of clearly set down rights on foot of a selective opinion.

blanch and a cohort quite clearly want the right to convict on foot of allegations. Dangerous people.

It is sad that you continue with this desperate strawman defence of all things Sinn Fein. You have convicted Leo on another thread, without being able to present any evidence at all as to what exact crime was committed. Claiming the high moral ground is demonstrable hypocrisy.

I don't claim that high moral ground, in fact I don't even see it as high moral ground. Hiding behind lofty moral principles to declare that the likes of Al Capone and O.J. Simpson are not killers is just silliness. Similarly, I don't see any problem with an opinion that declares that the evidence was such that the killers of Garda McCabe were lucky to get away with manslaughter. And I don't have a problem with anyone saying they believe Leo was guilty of a crime (which you and others have certainly implied if not stated outright), if you could present any single piece of evidence that there was a crime committed, let alone that Leo was guilty of it.

So I see nothing wrong with supporting the principle that everyone has a right to their good name or to be innocent until proven guilty, while at the same time, being able to offer an opinion on what the evidence available to you suggests.

So turning back to the present subject of this thread (any maybe you could confine your response to the subject of this thread), we know the following:

(1) Mary-Lou has not gone with a complaint to the Press Council

(2) Mary-Lou has gone straight to a defamation claim before the courts

(3) Mary-Lou has not said what the subject of the defamation claim is

(4) Nobody on this thread has been able to point to anything on RTE that might be the littlest bit defamatory

(5) SLAPPs cases are designed to hide information from the public

(6) SLAPPs cases avoid the Press Council process

(7) Ireland has been singled out by the EU, the NUJ, the media organisations, and NGOs in transparency and democracy as having a problem with SLAPPs cases, libel tourism and silencing the media.

(8) A person can reasonably conclude from the above that this case by Mary-Lou has all the appearance of a SLAPPs case.

(9) Nothing in any of the above infringes on any rights that an individual has and nothing in them is attempting to deprive anyone of their rights.

These nine points are all factual points, happy for you to correct them. No. 8 might be debatable, but stating as a fact that someone could reasonably hold a certain opinion, while not necessarily agreeing with that opinion, and accepting that there are other possible reasonable opinions, is tenable.

Well actually, that's the point. The information we have on this case leads me to a reasonable concluded defendable opinion that this is nothing more and nothing less than a SLAPPs-type attempt to silence the media. The fact that you don't know the details only supports and strengthens my opinion.

As you missed it from my last post, may I recall that we know the following:

(1) Mary-Lou has not gone with a complaint to the Press Council

(2) Mary-Lou has gone straight to a defamation claim before the courts

(3) Mary-Lou has not said what the subject of the defamation claim is

(4) Nobody on this thread has been able to point to anything on RTE that might be the littlest bit defamatory

(5) SLAPPs cases are designed to hide information from the public

(6) SLAPPs cases avoid the Press Council process

(7) Ireland has been singled out by the EU, the NUJ, the media organisations, and NGOs in transparency and democracy as having a problem with SLAPPs cases, libel tourism and silencing the media.

(8) A person can reasonably conclude from the above that this case by Mary-Lou has all the appearance of a SLAPPs case.

(9) Nothing in any of the above infringes on any rights that an individual has and nothing in them is attempting to deprive anyone of their rights.

These nine points are all factual points, happy for you to correct them. No. 8 might be debatable, but stating as a fact that someone could reasonably hold a certain opinion, while not necessarily agreeing with that opinion, and accepting that there are other possible reasonable opinions, is tenable.

If we have no information, and the intent of a SLAPPs case is for us to have no information, until we have some information that is the default conclusion.

Sorry, but not a single one of the nine points has been refuted, despite the pile-on of whataboutery and deflection.

I didn't bother reading them. Sorry, not in the business of working on supposition.

Start with 1)

Why didn't MLMD start with a complaint to the press council? Why would she skip that process?

The discussion is about MLMD suing RTE for what is clearly a SLAPPS situation.

None of her supporters on here have been able to refute it.

All available evidence point to it being SLAPPS.

And this is given that all the evidence is in the public domain and hasn't been taken down which it normally would if there was a genuine case to answer.

Now of course, the interpretation of that evidence is being kept secret by MLMD.

But for you to support MLMD here, you need to find a reasonable reason why the press council was skipped.

Or you can just exist on this thread (and all other threads) attempting to deflect attention elsewhere.

This case is very odd, everyone must at least agree to that level.

Why didn't she go to the press council first then?

I'll engage on facts not the feeling in yer waters...ok?

Then actually discuss, why didn't MLMD go to the press council? Why would she skip that step?