Ms Marion Coy and the Galway City Tribune
The Galway City Tribune on 12 September 2014 published an article under the headline “Who deleted the President’s emails?” with a sub-heading “Explosive findings as new GMIT probe urged into how evidence was destroyed”. The report concerned an investigation into how Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) had dealt with accusations of plagiarism by a student. The Galway City Tribune had received extracts from the report of the investigation and its article was based on these extracts. The opening paragraph stated “Evidence that was relevant to the external investigation into cheating at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) – and a possible cover up of the incident – has been destroyed”. The article claimed that emails of the President of the Institute at the time of the alleged cheating, Ms Marion Coy, “had been deleted from the college’s IT system” and that the investigators had made it clear that the deleted emails “might be relevant” to their inquiries. The article claimed this was just one of a “series of explosive revelations” in the investigators’ report. Further on in the article it was stated that Ms Marion Coy had “retired suddenly” from her position as President of GMIT.
Solicitors acting on behalf of Ms Marion Coy complained to the Press Ombudsman’s Office that the report in the Galway City Tribune had breached three Principles of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines, Principle 1 – Truth and Accuracy, Principle 3– Fairness and Honesty and Principle 4 - Respect for Rights. They stated that their client’s deleted emails had been retrieved by GMIT’s IT staff and had been found to contain nothing relevant to the Inquiry. In regard to Ms Coy’s retirement her solicitors stated that she had informed the Chairman of the GMIT Board of her intention to retire in February 2010 and that the Governing Body and staff had been informed in March 2010. Ms Coy retired in November 2010.
The Galway City Tribune in its response to Ms Coy’s complaint stated that the fact that the deleted emails had been retrieved was unknown at the time of publication of the article and that the newspaper had carried this fact on 26 September (the information had come too late to be included in the edition of 19 September). The newspaper drew attention to the fact that the article of 12 September had stated clearly that the deletion of the emails occurred after Ms Coy had left the Institute and that “contrary to your (Ms Coy’s through her solicitors) inference” the article had not suggested that “there was critical evidence of cheating”.
The newspaper defended what it had said about Ms Coy’s “sudden retirement” stating that a Staff Announcement dated 26 November informed all staff that Ms Coy was leaving on 30 November and that this announcement had left people “stunned” and was like a “bolt out of the blue”. The newspaper acknowledged that Ms Coy had given notice of her intention to retire the previous March, but “the shock circumstances of her premature exit a month early and the nature in which the staff and students were informed of it constituted, by any criteria, a sudden “retirement””.
In their response to the Galway City Tribune’s defence of its publication Ms Coy’s solicitors stated that the failure to include the information that the deleted files had been retrieved and had contained nothing relevant to the investigation was due to the failure of the paper to contact their client in advance of publication on 12 September. They further stated that contrary to the assertion of the newspaper their client’s departure a month earlier than intended was of no surprise to staff in GMIT.
During conciliation undertaken by the Press Ombudsman’s Office with the complainant and the newspaper the editor stood over the report as published but offered to publish a clarification, a wording of which he proposed. The wording proposed was not satisfactory to Ms Coy.
The Press Ombudsman has decided that the offer by the newspaper to publish a clarification was not sufficient, and therefore upholds Ms Coy’s complaint. The newspaper should have contacted Ms Coy or GMIT in advance of publication to seek a response to allegations of improper behaviour. Had the Galway City Tribune contacted GMIT the information about the deleted files having been retrieved might have been made known to the newspaper and had this happened it would have necessitated a considerable rewriting of the article. That this did not occur is sufficient reason to uphold the complaint as a breach of Principle 1 – Truth and Accuracy. The article stated that the emails of Ms Coy had been destroyed. Readers would have assumed this meant that the records were irretrievably lost. This was not the case and therefore the article breached Principle 1.
The article also breached Principle 3 - Fairness and Honesty. Section 3.1 of Principle 3 states that newspapers and magazines shall strive at all times for fairness and honesty in the procuring and publishing of news and information. In this instance the failure to contact Ms Coy before publishing the article was not fair and a breach of Principle 3. The article also breaches Principle 4 – Respect for Rights. This Principle requires journalists to take reasonable care in checking facts before publication. This did not happen in this case.
The second part of the complaint is the reporting of Ms Coy’s retirement. It is not disputed that Ms Coy gave GMIT ten months notice of her departure and that her departure date was brought forward by one month quite close to her planned departure date. The use of the word “sudden” to describe her departure in the article led the solicitors representing the complainant to believe that the intention was to create the suspicion that the sensational “evidence” in her email account might have been in some way connected to her retirement”. The Galway City Tribune defends the use of the word “sudden” as appropriate given the short notice of her departure being brought forward by one month.
The context in which Ms Coy’s departure is mentioned in the newspaper article is relatively “neutral”. The relevant sentence reads “The acting President of GMIT when the investigation was launched was Jim Fennell, who took over temporarily from Marion Coy who retired suddenly”. Given that the article was about “explosive findings” (the words used in the sub heading to the article) it is not unreasonable for the complainant to argue a link between the reporting of her “sudden” retirement with the findings of the investigation. However, because of the “neutral” context in which Ms Coy’s departure was referred to in the article this part of her complaint is not upheld.
4 December 2014
The newspaper appealed the decision of the Press Ombudsman to the Press Council of Ireland.