Mr Quirke complained that the article, which reported on an alleged family feud that eventually led to an assault as a result of which a man died, had said that the murder had taken place after what had been described by the paper as “an incident”, in which words had allegedly been exchanged, in a bar owned by Mr Quirke. The article went on to say that this “incident” in Mr Quirke’s bar escalated into violence, and the death of a man, at a different bar.
Mr Quirke asserted that there had been no exchange of words or altercation in his bar, and that the article had had a serious negative effect on his business. The newspaper responded that it had not reported that an altercation had taken place at Mr Quirke’s bar, and that the report they published was based on a belief by Gardaí that an exchange of words had taken place there.
Notwithstanding this, it offered to publish a clarification to highlight the fact that no violence took place in his bar. The offer was turned down by Mr Quirke on the basis that it came too late – coming as it did almost two months after he made his initial complaint about the article to the editor – and that it could not compensate for the loss of business that he said he had endured as a result of the publication of the original article.
The Press Ombudsman found that the article did not state that an altercation had taken place at Mr Quirke’s bar, although he accepted that the use of the word “incident” in the article – relating as it did to an alleged exchange of words – was imprecise. However, he found that the newspaper’s offer to publish a clarification that no violence took place in Mr Quirke’s bar was sufficient to put the record straight.
When a newspaper’s offer of a clarification has been refused by the complainant, but has been considered satisfactory by the Press Ombudsman, a newspaper is not required to publish this clarification. However, the Press Ombudsman recommends that in this case the newspaper should nonetheless consider publishing its proffered clarification as a goodwill gesture, and in recognition of the delay involved in arriving at this conclusion.
