The Press Ombudsman has decided not to uphold a complaint from Dr Caoimhín Ó Maolchalann about an article published in August 2024 in the Irish Independent and on Independent.ie.
The complainant stated that the article breached Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy) of the Code of Practice.
The article was a news report headlined “Social Democrats the only party so far to hit its gender quota target for general election” and it carried a photograph of the leader of that party. The complainant said that he was an Aontú activist. He wrote to the editor stating that the premise of the article was untrue as “a majority of selected Aontú candidates are female” and “the percentage of Aontú female candidates exceeds the percentage of SocDem [sic] female candidates”.
The day after Dr Ó Maolchalann contacted the publication it published an amended article online with an acknowledgement of the error it had made. However, in his complaint to the Press Ombudsman’s Office, Dr Ó Maochalann said the online amendment was insufficient to remedy the error and called on the publication to take further specified steps to correct the “misinformation”.
The publication responded that it had been contacted by Aontú as well as by the complainant after the article containing the error was published. It said it had spoken with the leadership of the party and had agreed to acknowledge the error, to amend the online article and, in lieu of a print correction, to publish another article about gender quota targets. It had done all of these things and had thus, it said, resolved the matter to the satisfaction of “the chiefly affected party” Aontú.
The complainant remained dissatisfied, stating that the publication’s response had not been sufficient. He said Aontú had thousands of members, and it was “not the exclusive right … even of the party leader” to decide whether the publication’s redress was adequate.
Decision
The Press Ombudsman finds that the publication took sufficient remedial action to address the error it made, an error which had been pointed out to it by the leadership of the political party, which has authority to take decisions on its behalf, as well as by Dr Ó Maolchalann, who does not. She finds this was clearly the most appropriate way of dealing with the matter, and the publication had followed through on the agreement it had made. Principle 1 requires publications to strive for truth and accuracy, and when inaccuracies occur, to remedy them. While it made an error in this case, the Irish Independent acknowledged this and took sufficient remedial action to avoid breaching Principle 1.
22 October, 2024
