Journal Media Limited and the Irish Daily Mirror

The Press Ombudsman has decided that an offer made by the Irish Daily Mirror constituted sufficient remedial action to remedy a complaint by Journal Media Limited (publishers of TheJournal.ie, an online news site) about a breach of Principle 5 (Privacy) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

A number of other complaints under Principles 1 (Truth and Accuracy), 2 (Distinguishing Fact and Comment), 3 (Fairness and Honesty) and 4 (Respect for Rights) were not upheld.

Journal Media Limited complained about the publication of the mobile telephone number of one of its reporters on the Twitter feed of the Irish Daily Mirror in the course of an exchange of tweets between the  Irish Daily Mirror and TheJournal.ie about alleged  plagiarism. The newspaper accepted that the reporter’s mobile telephone number should not have been tweeted, and said that it had deleted the tweet within ten minutes of it having been published.   The newspaper offered to publish an apology for the tweeting of the reporter’s mobile telephone number, and agreement was reached on the following wording: “On 27 June we tweeted @Biddy Early Susan Daly’s mobile number. We should not have done so and we apologise to her.  It was removed swiftly.”

However, agreement  could not be reached on the length of time the agreed text would remain on the newspaper’s Twitter feed.

The complainants, after initially asking that the tweet should be left permanently in place, proposed eventually that it should remain in place for six hours. The newspaper offered to allow it remain in place for one hour.

In this context it is worth noting the immediacy of Twitter.   The  tweet under complaint was in place for less than ten minutes.  However, it could have been re-tweeted by any number of people to any number of recipients in that time. The same applies to  the tweeting of the proposed apology.   It is   clear that commonsense, and the need to judge each case on its merits,  are, in the age of instant digital communication,  more appropriate instruments than strict metrics in deciding what timeline is appropriate and what is not.

The opinion of the Press Ombudsman is that, in this instance, the offer made by the newspaper to resolve the complaint about the tweeting of the reporter’s mobile telephone number was proportionate and therefore amounted to sufficient remedial action to remedy that part of the complaint made under Principle 5 of the Code.

Journal Media Limited also complained under Principles 1, 2  and 4 about a number of other tweets posted by the newspaper. The Irish  Daily Mirror maintained that their tweets, which were one side of  an exchange of tweets between them and TheJournal.ie, did not breach the Principles of the Code of Practice cited by the complainants, and noted that they were, in any event, removed from the newspaper’s Twitter feed the day after posting.   

Although combative tweets exchanged between skilful verbal protagonists may be portrayed by either party as indistinguishable from statements reported as fact, the dominant mode of the tweets complained about in this instance was clearly one of comment or conjecture, rather than of fact, and for these reasons the complaints alleging their factual inaccuracy under Principle 1, and the alleged failure to distinguish between fact and comment under Principle 2, are not upheld.   There was insufficient evidence to uphold the complaint under Principle 4 that these tweets were knowingly published based on malicious rumour or unfounded accusations.

The complainants also alleged that an article published in the print edition of the Irish Daily Mirror on  27 June was in breach of Principle 3.1 because, it said, it reproduced wording from an article published in TheJournal.ie on 26 June. This, it said, was a breach of the requirement of Principle 3.1 to strive at all times for fairness and honesty in the procuring and publishing of news and information.

The reproduction in the press of information from other media without attribution is commonplace within the industry, but definitive evidence of its provenance from a unique source is rarely available, and the reproduction of material already in the public domain also raises complex issues.   Legitimate concerns about a possible breach of Principle 3.1 in such cases would,  in the opinion of the Press Ombudsman, arise only where there is incontrovertible evidence  of gross and unjustifiable republication of material to a degree that would demonstrate conclusively that a newspaper had not striven at all times for fairness and honesty in the procuring and  publishing of the information in question.  The issues raised by the complainants under Principle 3.1 in this context do not, in the opinion of the Press Ombudsman, meet these criteria, and this aspect of the complaint is therefore not upheld.

21 October 2013