Blurred Keys

The Press Ombudsman said last night his role was to take both sides extremely seriously, but some complainants contacting his office about newspaper articles are unreasonable and should grow up a bit.

“I sometimes get the feeling that complainants are a little bit unreasonable, that they should grow up a bit. We live in a rough old world where things are not perfect, taste is not always exquisite, language is not always polite, and as grown up people we have to learn to live with that,” said Press Ombudsman John Horgan.

Speaking to the Journalism Society at Dublin City University, he said sometimes people have to be reminded that just because somebody is offended by a newspaper article does not mean a breach of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Periodicals has occurred.

“The newspaper that does not offend anybody ever is the newspaper that is probably not doing its job properly. But there’s a kind of feeling around that some people think that people who are offended feel that and offence has been created and somebody’s got to be punished for it. Preferably severally, preferably as soon as possibly,” said Mr Horgan.

The Office of the Ombudsman has received around 350 complaints in each of its first two years, 2008 and 2009. Mr Horgan said for every 100,000 people of the Irish population his office gets just over nine complaints, that compares to just over six complains per 100,000 people to the UK Press Complaints Commission.

“When you control for size you get a little bit more complaints than they do in Britain, but you can’t draw any great conclusions from that,” he said.

Defending the process where complainants first have to contact the newspaper directly, he said, “This sounds like passing the buck, but it’s not. Editors really want the chance to deal with complaints them self… and the newspapers do deal with them increasingly seriously because they know if they don’t satisfy them they can come back to us and then it goes up a notch.”

He said, “I’m an ombudsman, I’m not a consumer representative or consumer advocate. I may become so in certain cases, where I think that the complainant really has had a raw deal.”

In only one case so-far has the Ombudsman decided to take on a case without the complainant first talking to the newspaper. He said this was because the person was extremely upset, and really did not want direct contact with publication.

On if the Press Ombudsman was lacking “teeth” or effect sanctions, he said ask any editor or journalist and see what they say. The only sanction available is to get a publication to publish the Ombudsman’s decisions in full, without being edited.

“People say a slap on the wrist, it does not matter. Sitting where I sit it does not seem like that. And if you really think that it is a slap on the wrist ask editors and journalists who have been affected by it,” he said.

If more power was give to his office it would have have to be given in law, and he said that would be the “thin edge of a very big wedge” of government influence of the press.

He pointed to privacy as a big issue, saying that privacy was like an “ice cube, once melted it cannot be reconstituted.” But on the other hand, his office has received complaints about courts cases which are a matter of public record.

DCU’s Journalism Society are due to upload a video of the talk, we’ll link to that after it becomes available.

The Journalism Society at DCU is to host two talks in the next week. This evening Press Ombudsman, John Horgan, will speak on the importance of journalism in the 21st century. And, on Monday, BBC journalist Alan Johnston will speak about his career, which includes stints in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip. For more details see: journosoc.com.

Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame, points to The Sunday Times publishing “some pretty desperate climate pseudoscience.”

At the weekend an article, by the Times’ science and environment editor Jonathan Leake and included in the Irish edition of the paper, was headlined “World may not be warming, say scientists.” It claimed “The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.”

However, Leftfootforward.org says the organisation named in the article is a global warming skeptics group, while one of the authors of the mentioned report is “a leading climate denial blogger and somebody without any climate science credentials.”

The Irish Daily Mirror named Eamonn Lillis’s 17-year-old daughter even after the judge warned the media not to identify her due to her age.

SEE: Paper ordered to donate over error, The Irish Times - Saturday, February 13, 2010

In The Irish Times, barrister Damian Byrne, says how the Mahon v Keena and Kennedy result last year changes Irish courts’ position of the protection of journalist’s sources:

Protection of sources now has courts’ imprimatur
The Irish Times - Monday, February 15, 2010

“…The right of a journalist to protect the  confidentiality of sources has now received the imprimatur of the Irish courts in the case of Mahon v Keena and Kennedy…”

“The judgments of the High Court and Supreme Court in Mahon v Keena and Kennedy are very much at odds with older Irish authorities such as Re Kevin O’Kelly. An important caveat is that the right of non-disclosure does not seem to have been challenged or contested in this case, and Re Kevin O’Kelly was not considered. The O’Kelly ruling can probably no longer be regarded as good law in light of the enactment of the 2003 Act [the European Convention on Human Rights]. There is still no question of journalists enjoying an absolute privilege against disclosure. They will still be compelled to reveal sources by a court if disclosure is deemed justified “by an overriding requirement in the public interest”.

Deirdre de Burca’s public letter to Green Party leader John Gormley today makes it clear that she is leaving the Green Party Parliamentary Party and from the Seanad because the party has lost its way.

There seems to be a mixture of reporting at the moment, but at least some of it does not even mention the fact her move comes just after she was rejected for a job with Ireland’s new European Commissioner, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn. Some breaking news text reports online, for example, mentions it, but do so near the middle or end of long articles. No story that Blurred Keys could find on Google News leads on the angle, or even mentions it in the first few paragraphs.

But it all just seems like a distraction tactic from the real news here: De Burca was rejected by Maire Geoghegan-Quinn and then de Burca quits. That, however, would read ‘politician rejected for job angry at party,’ and that’s hardly ground-breaking news.

Her swipes at the party don’t seem that believable given that she was — just before her rejection — willing to quietly take the job with Maire Geoghegan-Quinn. Even if her grievances are believable, what she is saying is coming from a debased position (a position which is not clearly being reported). It looks nothing more than a PR move. The Phoenix reported yesterday that her leaking of the story that she was to get a job with the European Commissioner backfired, it could be the reason she did not get the post. Will this new move backfire?

Irish politics may need fixing, but this — nor George Lee’s departure earlier in the week — are firm bases for such reform.

PHOTO: Green Party / CC BY-ND 2.0

Blurred Keys is going to be updated again. No promises for how long, but, for now, expected updates at least once or twice a week.

A special thanks to The Sunday Times and the very few others who noticed we were gone.