We go around shouting through people's letter boxes, shoving cameras in their faces and generally making a nuisance of ourselves. At least that's what you'd think from the many writs and legal threats regularly fired off in our direction.

One of the most common legally-threatening words is "mischievous", which makes it sound as if journalists sit around making up stories that ruin people's lives and reputations "just for the craic".

Such archaic legalese would be amusing if it weren't so potentially darned ruinous;

getting dragged into a libel action is every journalist's nightmare and it can happen all too easily.

Libel has many legal definitions but there is a simple, easy-to-remember journalistic one: it's whatever anyone rich enough to hire a fancy lawyer can contrive to take offence at.

Even a mere accusation of libel means being embroiled in a Kafkaesque nightmare that will grind on for years, during which the most nitpicking details will be endlessly combed over and take on monumental importance as the threat of financial ruin hangs over everyone involved.

(Journalists' employers usually pay the astronomical legal costs and awards but have no obligation to do so. ) The defendant has absolutely nothing to gain and a hell of a lot to lose. Even in the rare cases when they win, they end up losing a fortune . . . as RTE did in the Beverly Flynn case . . . because legal bills are so outrageously high.

Most media companies would take the pragmatic view and save themselves a fortune by settling early and issuing a craven apology. Not many will risk paying up 1.5m if they win and God knows what astronomical sum if they lose (a far more likely outcome).

RTE did the best it could on behalf of its licence-holders by accepting the reported 1.3m out of the total 2.8m awarded to it. That's actually a pretty good return from a potential bankrupt. Most creditors get a lot less when defaulting debtor companies go belly-up.

But Charlie Bird is lucky that RTE had the cojones to go as far as it did in its legal battle with Flynn.

Most other organisations would . . . quite rightly from a financial viewpoint . . . fold early on and sacrifice the reputation of their journalists, rather than risk a legal battle in which even the winner has to pay up one and a half million smackeroos.

But shouldn't RTE have done the same for the sake of its licence-holders? How many companies would hand over a million and a half quid . . . and risk losing several times more than that . . . to defend an employee?

And why do journalists enter the minefield of financial scandals in the first place? Apart from the risk of libel, the labyrinthine legal and financial issues are complete head-wreckers even for accountants . . . and much more so for far less specialised journalists, who are not naturally numerically gifted.

Most hacks are so hardpressed to come up with everyday news that doing the "investigative" stuff usually means putting in a lot of extra weeks on your own time.

But why bother to expose financial shenanigans at all?

Do the public really care? In the US, any whiff of financial dodginess . . . particular in relation to tax evasion . . . and the guilty parties get dumped out of office, or worse.

Here, they get re-elected with a bigger share of the vote. Sean O Faolain identified the reason for this way The Irish, published in the 1940s, he pinpointed a "duality" in our inherent thought processes; an ability to be comfortable with apparent contradictions.

Basically, in the Anglo Saxon world, there's right and wrong. In the Celtic mindset, there are three options: right, wrong and "Ah sure it'll be grand".

Our sense of morality doesn't work in black and white but in ever-shifting shades of grey . . . and we have a tendency to feel sorry for wrongdoers even before they have been punished.

That's why many of the electorate ignored the financial shenanigans that have embroiled several of the leading figures in the new government . . . Bertie Ahern, Beverley Flynn and Michael Lowry, for example . . . to give them a thumping vote of approval.

But ever so slowly, that is changing, and there is now a slight but palpable public unease at the sight of the grinning trio triumphantly taking office.

Even our Celtic brains are starting to grasp the inherent contradiction of someone who has been shown to have encouraged tax evasion (Flynn) taking a leading role in a government whose massive budget depends on people actually paying their tax!

Maybe sometime in the distant future the public will start to appreciate muckrakers. It's dirty job, but someone has to do it.