Complaint
Ms Justine Delaney-Wilson complained that an article about an RTE documentary on drug users in the Irish Independent on 4th February 2008 was in breach of Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy). Specifically, she complained that there was never an allegation by her, or by her book “The High Society”, that a pilot had snorted cocaine while in the cockpit, or that a priest said he had used cocaine (the priest in her book had said that he was a codeine addict).
The newspaper replied that the complainant had given a newspaper interview in late 2007 in which she replied to a question about cocaine use in the cockpit that “…. it does happen and it is unfortunate that it does” (the complainant subsequently stated that the question reprinted in the article was not the direct question put to her in the interview and was incorrectly quoted in the 2007 article). In relation to the second complaint, the newspaper accepted that it had made an error when referring to the priest as a cocaine user, but maintained that in the context of the article the inaccuracy was not significant.
Decision
The newspaper’s inference about the pilot is supported, not only by the interview quoted (and whose accuracy was not questioned by the complainant at the time), but by a passage in the book (supplied by the complainant) in which the pilot says, in relation to cocaine: “I find sitting still in the confined space of the cockpit excruciating without it.” The inference, on the basis of this evidence, is reasonable and this part of the complaint is therefore not upheld.
The newspaper’s error about the priest, although only one of a large number of statements in the article, is not insignificant in the context of the widespread controversy about the book and the television programme based on it, the criticisms of the complainant’s methodology and accuracy, and the substantial difference in the publicity given to cocaine as contrasted with codeine addiction. In addition, the newspaper’s failure – which it said was unintended – to respond to the complainant’s correspondence, in relation to what it later agreed was an error on its part, prolonged the handling of what should have been a relatively simple matter. This part of the complaint is therefore upheld.
