ODonoghue and the Irish Sunday Mirror

Complaint

Mr O’Donoghue complained about a news report published in the Irish Sunday Mirror on 4 May 2008, headlined “Wayne’s Dad uses Robert killing to get dream home” and “Boy’s death exploited to help killer’s family land home deal”. The report was about a successful planning application made by Mr O’Donoghue and granted in March 2007. Mr O’Donoghue complained that the report’s headlines were in breach of Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy) and Principle 4 (Respect for Rights) of the Code of Practice, and that the report itself was in breach of Principle 5 (Privacy). He also complained that the report alleged a motivation on his part to profit from the death of Robert Holohan, of whose manslaughter Mr O’Donoghue’s son, Wayne, had been convicted some years earlier. Finally, he complained about the fact that the report was written by the newspaper’s “crime correspondent”.

The newspaper rejected all of Mr O’Donoghue’s claims and stated that the report was truthful, accurate, fair and honest, and that the matters disclosed were matters of public record. Specifically, it noted that the complainant had not alleged that any of “the underlying facts” in the report were wrong, and that the granting of planning permission in the light of the particular application was a matter of public interest.

Decision

The information contained in the report was drawn in the main from the planning file in Cork County Council relating to Mr. O’Donoghue’s application to build a house on a site for which another planning application had previously been refused. The report included the full text of a letter that Mr O’Donoghue had written to the Council, in which he asked for permission to be granted in the light of the exceptional circumstances following his son’s conviction, emphasising that the Holohan and O’Donoghue families had been neighbours and that his family had moved into rented accommodation in the hope that it would ease the trauma and hurt for the Holohan family.

The core issue to be decided in relation to Mr. O’Donoghue’s complaint under Principle 1 centres on the report’s headlines and their relationship to the remainder of the report. If headlines are to be justified as part of a news report under Principle 1, they should be accurate, truthful, not misleading and not distorted, although a certain licence is acceptable in the interests of effective condensation. In this case, the prejudicial implications of the headlines, and in particular the use of the term “exploited” - i.e. utilised for selfish purposes – breach Principle 1 of the Code of Practice. The significance of this breach is underlined by the fact that the headlines account for substantially more than half of the total amount of space devoted to text (excluding photographs) in the report.

The second paragraph of the report purports to quote from a letter that Mr O’Donoghue sent to Cork Council Council. Since the letter is a matter of public record, the publication of its contents – if accurate - is not a breach of the Code. However, the attribution to the complainant in this paragraph of the report of what appears to be a fabricated quotation (“stunning coastal views”) is inaccurate and misleading, since the statement in quotation marks is not contained in the published text of Mr O’Donoghue’s letter. It is therefore also a breach of Principle 1.

There is no evidence that the headlines involved the knowing publication of matter based on malicious misrepresentation or unfounded accusations, which would be required to support a complaint about a breach of Principle 4.

Mr O’Donoghue argued that the report was an invasion of his privacy and rejected the newspaper’s contention that there was a public interest in his planning application. However, it is up to newspapers to determine what issues they consider to be of interest to their readers, subject to the provisions of the Code of Practice. Insofar as the information contained in the body of the report is comprised of facts which form part of the public record, it is protected under Principle 5.2 of the Code of Practice, which states that the right to privacy should not prevent publication of matters of public record. In the light of this, the report does not breach Principle 5.

To credit the reporting of a planning matter to a “crime correspondent” is unusual, but not a breach of the Code, and is an editorial decision about which readers can draw their own conclusions.

8 July 2008

The newspaper appealed the decision of the Press Ombudsman to the Press Council of Ireland.