Mr Bryan MacDonald and The Nationalist

The Press Ombudsman has decided that The Nationalist made an offer of sufficient remedial action  to resolve a complaint made by Mr Bryan MacDonald that an article it  published was in breach of Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy) and Principle 3 (Fairness and Honesty) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

Mr MacDonald complained that the article, published on 14 January 2014, inaccurately reported him as saying, in the course of an interview with him on a television programme about austerity policies in Ireland, featured on YouTube, that Carlow was ‘nothing’ anymore.

The newspaper accepted that it had misquoted the complainant in the article, and offered to publish a substantial segment of the text of the original interview to clarify the matter.  Mr MacDonald rejected this offer as he disputed the wording offered by the newspaper, and asked for a longer extract from the interview to be published, to be accompanied by an apology.

In the opinion of the Press Ombudsman, who was provided by the complainant with a copy of the tape of the relevant portion of the programme concerned, the newspaper’s offer, because it satisfactorily corrected its original report in the light of what was said on the tape of the interview, was an offer of sufficient remedial action on its part to resolve the complaint.

19 March 2014