Ms Marion Coy and the Galway City Tribune

In December 2014 the Press Ombudsman upheld a complaint by Ms Marion Coy concerning a report into an inquiry at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology.  The newspaper appealed the decision to the Press Council of Ireland. In January 2015 the Council rejected the newspaper’s appeal and affirmed the decision of the Press Ombudsman. On 10 April 2015 the Galway City Tribune published the decision of the Press Ombudsman and the Press Council.

Ms Coy complained that the newspaper in its publication of the decision had breached Principle 4 (Respect for Rights) and Principle 10 (Publication of the Decision of the Press Ombudsman/Press Council) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines. She claimed that the failure to give a heading to the published decision breached Principle 10. (The newspaper had published the decision under the logo of the Press Council/Press Ombudsman without any heading.)  She also claimed that the decision had been published down one side and across the bottom of page 2 to give it as “little prominence as possible”.  She furthermore argued that the manner of the publication breached Principle 4 as the decision had not been published in a “fair and proper fashion”.

The editor of the Galway City Tribune responded by saying that the heading was inadvertently dropped in the production process, and offered to publish a clarification on this point.  He rejected that the decision was published in a manner that did not give sufficient prominence.  The wording of the proposed clarification was as follows:

Clarification

Ms Marion Coy

In our issue of Friday, April 10 we published a decision of the Press Ombudsman/Press Council to uphold a complaint against the Galway City Tribune by Ms Marion Coy.  We now wish to point out that in the production process, the heading “Ms Marion Coy and the Galway City Tribune” was inadvertently omitted.  We regret this error.

Ms Coy did not find the offer to publish a clarification acceptable as, in her view, its publication without the re-publication of the findings in full of the Press Ombudsman and Press Council “makes no sense”.  She also continued to complain that the publication of the decision had not been given sufficient prominence.

As the complaint could not be resolved by conciliation it went to the Press Ombudsman for a decision.

I am not upholding this complaint. 

It is regrettable that the Galway City Tribune failed to publish a heading on the decision of the Press Ombudsman and Press Council on 10 April, but I accept their explanation that this was an error, and therefore the newspaper’s offer to publish a clarification with the proposed wording was sufficient

to resolve this part of the complaint. I also believe that publication of the decision on page two, and the manner in which it was published, gave sufficient prominence to the decision, so this part of the complaint under Principle l0 is not upheld.   

I also find that there was no breach of Principle 4 in the manner in which the decision was published, as there was no evidence that the decision was knowingly published based on malicious misrepresentation or unfounded accusations, or that the newspaper did not take reasonable care in checking facts before publication.   

19 May 2015