The article, entitled “Giving to charity, or to bloated salaries?”, was published on 16 April 2011 and commented on controversies relating to Rehab and its Chief Executive that were in the public domain. The commentary was based in part on what it described as “revelations” that had previously appeared in other publications.
The complainants’ solicitors specified a number of claimed factual errors, some of which were accepted by the newspaper, and provided evidence that some of the hypothetical questions raised in the article as issues affecting the company and its Chief Executive were based on misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or incomplete information, and were therefore misleading. They also pointed out that the newspaper had been clearly informed, prior to publication, that a previously reported figure for the salary of its Chief Executive was inaccurate. Although the complainants had not at that stage divulged the details of the salary concerned, their denial of the accuracy of a previously reported figure was not included in the article.
The newspaper initially offered to clarify these matters in a follow-up article. It subsequently offered to publish an interview with the Chief Executive of Rehab. It offered, finally, to publish a clarification and invited the complainants to submit a draft.
In the course of the investigation of this complaint, it emerged that subsequent to contacts between the newspaper and a spokesman for Rehab, but on the same day, Rehab had issued a detailed statement, on many of the issues under complaint, to another publication. This information was published as part of a news story by the other publication on the same day as the Irish Examiner’s article. Rehab did not send the statement to the Irish Examiner, despite an invitation from the newspaper to send them any additional information that might become available, even after their deadline for that specific article.
The complainants’ justification for not making important information available to the Irish Examiner, while at the same time making it available to a different publication, was unconvincing. Nonetheless, because of the significant factual inaccuracies and misleading statements it contained, this article was a breach of the Code of Practice and the complaint under Principle 1 is therefore upheld.
The complaint about the article under Principle 4 was not upheld because there was no evidence that its contested description of the Chief Executive as “a perfect product of State crony capitalism”, while unsupported by verifiable evidence, was knowingly published based on malicious misrepresentation or unfounded accusations, as is required to support a complaint under this Principle.
