A Man and the Irish Daily Mail

Complaint

The man complained that an item about him in the “Isaac Bickerstaffe” gossip column in the Irish Daily Mail of 17th April 2008 contravened a number of Principles of the Code of Practice: 1 (Truth and Accuracy), 2 (Distinguishing Fact and Comment), 3 (Fairness and Honesty), 4 (Respect for Rights) and 5 (Privacy). The item recorded a journalist’s sighting of the complainant driving an S-class Mercedes in a traffic jam at 8.30 am, and contrasted this sighting with an earlier interview in which the complainant had disclosed that he had recently purchased a €320,000 Bentley and that he was usually at work by 6.30 am. The complainant said that the inference that could be and had been drawn from the item was that he was a liar. The newspaper denied that any such inference was reasonable, and noted that the facts as observed and reported were not in dispute.
 

Decision

Public figures who are accustomed to seeing themselves written about in gossip columns will also be accustomed to occasionally reading items about them that are not wholly to their liking. The context, style and tone of this item, and the columnist’s humorous expression of bafflement at his own inability to provide an explanation for this conjuncture of events, cannot reasonably be said to infer that the complainant is a liar, and therefore do not present a breach of any of the Principles of the Code of Practice enumerated by him.
 

21 May 2008 

The complainant appealed the decision to the Press Council of Ireland