The article, written as context to a court decision in a murder case, included substantial details from a statement made to Gardaí by the complainant which, although not all of its contents were revealed in court, was made available to the newspaper by a third party.
The treatment of the statement in the newspaper, as the complainant pointed out, was inaccurate and misleading in that it implied, by reporting on its front page that she had “yesterday” made a particular statement, that the contents of the article were derived from a contemporary interview by its reporter with the complainant. The statement had in fact been made to Gardaí some six months or more earlier, and the word “yesterday” had been added by a sub-editor to the copy furnished by the reporter. The newspaper accepted that this was incorrect and offered to publish a clarification.
Although the newspaper’s subsequent treatment of this topic made it clear that the quotes came from a statement made only to Gardaí for the purposes of providing evidence in a court case, its unqualified initial attribution to the complainant, and its misrepresentation of the date of the statement, were plainly calculated to magnify the significance of the material it contained. This was significantly misleading and undoubtedly a cause of concern to the complainant.
However, the newspaper’s ready admission that this was an error, and its offer to correct it in print, was, under the circumstances, an offer of sufficient remedial action to resolve this breach of Principle 1 of the Code of Practice.
There was no evidence to support the complaint that the article concerned was in breach of Principle 2 of the Code.
The complaint under Principle 4 is not upheld because there was insufficient evidence that the newspaper had knowingly published matter based on malicious misrepresentation or unfounded accusations, as would be required to support a complaint under this Principle, or that it had not taken reasonable care in checking facts before publication.
In relation to the complaint under Principle 5 of the Code of Practice, the newspaper provided evidence that the statement had been shown to its reporter with the consent of the complainant and for the purpose of clarifying her role in the events concerned in its report. This, together with the inevitable prominence of the complainant’s role in those events, is sufficient to satisfy the Press Ombudsman that Principle 5 was not breached on this occasion.
