Irish Traveller Movement and the Evening Herald

The Press Ombudsman has decided to uphold a complaint by the Irish Traveller Movement that an article in the Evening Herald on 14 September 2011 was in breach of Principles 2 (Distinguishing Fact and Comment) and 8 (Prejudice) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

The article, headlined “Traveller Gangs have become a mafia the law fears to tackle”, asked “When did Travellers go from being craftspeople to establishing themselves as a pan-national crime gang?”, and maintained that “many [Travellers have] turned to drugs and crime” and had become “what appears to be Ireland’s biggest crime gang.”

The Irish Traveller Movement Law Centre complained that the article harmed and caused grave offence to the Traveller community, that it reinforced stereotypes, and compounded racism and discrimination.

The newspaper, in response, stated that the essential point of the article – which was an opinion column - was not to label the Traveller community as a whole, but to argue that there was a strong link between members of the Traveller community and illegal activity. It supplied reports of a number of court cases it believed were relevant that involved members of the Traveller community. It offered to publish an article in response by a representative from the Irish Traveller Movement or a person nominated by them.

The Preamble to the Code of Practice states clearly that publications are entitled to publish what they consider to be news without fear or favour, and to comment on it. While the article is clearly an opinion piece, and as such is entitled to a reasonable amount of latitude, opinions reported as fact must observe basic standards of verifiability if they are not to give rise to potential issues in the context of the Code of Practice. In this case, the supporting material provided by the newspaper – reports of a number of court cases – was evidence only of the level of interest of newspapers and their readers in reports of crime by Travellers, and of the fact that some Traveller criminals had - like their equivalents in the settled community - begun to operate in gangs. This material presented quite inadequate verification of the generalisations about Travellers complained of, or of the statement in the headline that the law feared to tackle Traveller crime. Because the newspaper’s response, including the material that it provided, was insufficient to justify the reporting of these opinions as fact, the complaint under Principle 2 is upheld.
Because these opinions were expressed in a way that inadequately distinguished between Traveller gangs and the community of Travellers in general, this also caused grave offence to many people on the basis of their membership of the travelling community, and the complaint under Principle 8 is therefore upheld.

The Press Ombudsman could not make a decision about the complaint under Principle 1 because what was complained about under this Principle was published as part of a question. The complaint that the article was in breach of Principle 4 was not upheld because the complaint was not made on behalf of any identifiable member of the Travelling community.

16 February 2012

The Newspaper appealed the Decision of the Press Ombudsman to the Press Council of Ireland.