the liberal state. The same state that this week arrested a journalist for publishing the truth.

A lot has happened since the fifth annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index put Ireland on top, alongside Finland, Iceland and the Netherlands. The index was compiled between 1 September 2005 and 1 September 2006.

Since then, the editor of the Irish Times, Geraldine Kennedy, and Times reporter Colm Keena were threatened with fines of up to 300,000 and up to two years in prison for their refusal to identify the source of a leak that caused Taoiseach Bertie Ahern huge embarrassment. That case returns to court this week.

Also, since the Press Freedom Index was compiled, the world's top media professionals and academics have publicly condemned the forthcoming privacy bill, saying that it signals a death knell for good investigative journalism.

The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors' Forum have both opposed the bill, while solicitor and media law specialist Andrea Martin said that it "should cause alarm throughout the profession and, indeed, throughout society, which benefits from having a free and vigorous press at work".

Also, a visiting international expert on press regulation, Prof Robert Pinker, international consultant to the British Press Complaints Commission, publicly announced that the planned bill would have a "chilling effect on the conduct of responsible investigative journalism". But last December, the taoiseach insisted that the privacy bill was going ahead.

Last week, a Sunday Tribune journalist was arrested for the publication of extracts from a draft report, three weeks before the finalised document was due to be officially published. No-one has suggested that the information that was published was incorrect. The problem, according to the Department of Justice, is that it was published at all. This was in contravention of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004. The law had been broken. McCaffrey was eventually released and now a file has been sent to the DPP.

Taken as a whole, the events of the last five months hardly seem fitting for a state that is number one in the world for press freedom. Indeed, when compared to countries that are much farther down the Press Freedom Index, Ireland's position at the top must surely now be in question.

While constraints on press freedom here have obviously not yet degenerated to the level of many other countries, the trend over the last few months is undeniable. It is not dissimilar to the situation in the US, which was demoted nine places in the index last year because the government there is using the law to clamp down on investigative reporting. The survey said that the federal courts in the States "refuse to recognise the media's right not to reveal its sources". Sound familiar?