But what struck me, in reports of the conference, was the way the speakers evaded discussing the fact that some newspapers all the time, and all newspapers once in a while, do, in fact, invade people's privacy and do cause great distress and do not offer redress. I was alert to this because of a little brush with the media of my own, lately. It was of no importance to anyone except myself, but it does illustrate on a small scale the helplessness of an individual in the face of media attention.

My house in Dublin had been advertised for sale this month and there were open showings going on, leading up to an auction. I was on holiday in Italy. On a very bad connection I heard from a friend . . . who's been largely living in the house in recent times, while I've been largely living in Clare . . . that there'd been a fire in the hallway of the house. It might have been maliciously started, my friend said . . . he'd called the fire brigade and one of the firemen had said so. On the other hand, the fusebox is behind the front door on a level with the mail slot, so we thought maybe it was something to do with the electricity. In any event, a showing was scheduled for three days later and both the fire and putting out the fire had caused dirt and damage, so we decided to get in a specialist team to mend and repaint and clean and so on and so forth. It was a very, very expensive exercise. But it would have been expensive, too, to postpone the auction and waste all the advertising and the work put into it. So after round-the-clock work, the showing went ahead as scheduled and the house was fine.

The next day I was amazed to see in The Sunday Times a story which said that gardai had confirmed that an arsonist had targeted my house.

Maybe, the story said, this was because it had been featured in a property supplement about houses for sale. Needless to say, I got on to the garda. The relevant superintendant said that no one had spoken to the The Sunday Times or any other paper. The garda who'd come to the fire vehemently denied that he or either of the other two investigating gardai had spoken to any newspaper. The garda press office had had no contact with any newspaper.

I suppose what happened was that someone, somewhere, gossiped. But that, of course, is not what the reader takes from the word 'confirmed'. Very interesting word, that . . . 'confirmed'. It has a spuriously authoritative ring.

And it implies that there was in some sense a pre-existing story before the journalist sat down at his desk.

I emailed the man who wrote the story to ask him who told him there was an arsonist in pursuit of me? After all, I'd like to know. He replied:

As a journalist, I'm sure you'll understand that I can't give you those details.

A day or two later the same story turned up in another paper. This time there'd been promotion for the mysterious gardai. Now it was "senior investigators" who "confirmed" that "the evidence gathered to date indicates that a person poured a flammable liquid like petrol through the letterbox". I emailed the reporter to ask whether I could be put in touch with these senior investigators. This is the information I obtained by asking gardai questions, the reporter replied, and I'm sure you will know as a journalist yourself that asking gardai questions is part of the reporter's everyday job, as is not disclosing the identities of those gardai.

Well, you can see what the argument here is;

a journalist doesn't have to stand up a story.

Why not? Because they're a journalist. For example, if I say that I was told that certain reporters on certain newspapers invent stories, and I'm asked who told me that, I can answer that as a journalist I can't reveal my informants. But that defence should not be lightly used. It comes from the noble tradition of whistleblowing, when reporters in possession of information of great public importance . . .

the Pentagon Papers, for instance . . . stood up to the might of the state and risked jail, in the public interest. What public interest, I amuse myself by asking, was at stake in respect to my fire?

The fire department's report on the fire says that there was "possible malicious intent".

Maybe so. There's no evidence so far, one way or another. I don't think it was malicious, myself.

The fire broke out at 10 in the morning, on an open doorstep shared with my next-door neighbour, in a cul-de-sac where there are no passersby. You try standing on a doorstep and getting a flammable liquid through the stiff flap of a mail slot and then getting lit matches in after the petrol. I wouldn't say it's easy. As for The Sunday Times' suggestion that my address was discovered in the property supplement, I've been in the phonebook at the same address for 16 years. I'm on the electoral register. Not to mention that if someone feels so strongly about you that they want to burn your house down they probably know where you live.

No great harm was done to me by the newspaper stories. There was some distress, of course, to people who know me, and the house didn't sell and I don't suppose the negative publicity helped. But the experience has left me more sceptical than I would like to be about journalists' 'rights'. I certainly think that there's a question that needs to be addressed. If licence is allowed to the responsible press, who will protect the public from the parts of the press that are less than responsible?