1739/2024 - Headline and Sundayworld.com

The Press Council of Ireland has overturned a decision of the Press Ombudsman not to uphold a complaint by Headline that the Sundayworld.com breached Principle 10 (Reporting of Suicide) of the Press Council’s Code of Practice.

Press Ombudsman’s Decision

On 25 August 2023 the Press Ombudsman decided not to uphold a complaint made by Headline, the national media programme for responsible reporting and representation of mental ill health and suicide, that Sundayworld.com breached Principle 10 (Reporting of Suicide) of the Code of Practice of the Press Council of Ireland in an article published in May 2023 in its Irish news section.  The article is a report on an inquest into the deaths of a man, his partner and their adult son in 2021, at which the Coroner returned a verdict that the man died by suicide, while the woman and the young man were unlawfully killed.

Principle 10 of the Code of Practice states that “in the reporting of suicide, excessive detail of the means of suicide should be avoided”.  In its complaint to the Press Ombudsman, Headline stated that the newspaper had included such excessive detail in its report.  It highlighted what it saw as instances of this: the publication had specified the part of the man’s body into which he had fired the shot which killed him and had described the physical impact of the shot. It also identified the weapon as a particular type of gun.  Headline said its concern was the risk of copycat suicides.

In its complaint, Headline stated that it had asked the publication to remove these details, but that the editor had declined. Headline gave examples of how other publications had covered the same inquest without, as it saw it, breaching Principle 10 of the Code.  It said it did not wish to be “excessively dogmatic” nor to obstruct what the editor had, in correspondence, referred to as the “constitutional imperative to report on matters before public inquiries”.

In response, the editor of Sundayworld.com denied breaching the Code of Practice. He reiterated that Bunreacht na hÉireann required that justice be administered in public and stated that this created an imperative for the media to act as “the eyes and ears of the public”.   He said he did not accept that Principle 10 of the Code operated in such a way as to infringe the “constitutional right to report freely on court proceedings”.  He said if it was interpreted in such a way as to censor information arising from public inquiries such as inquests, this would set a “dangerous precedent”.

The editor said the Sundayworld.com article had provided the same level of detail in relation to each of the three deaths, in the sequence in which the Coroner had requested the evidence to be presented. He said the passages on the suicide must be read in context and it would be “unjust” to reduce the level of detail that could be provided on the suicide evidence as compared to the two unlawful killings.  He said none of the extracts identified by Headline represented excessive detail and could not be considered to pose a serious contagion risk, when compared with other information to which the organisation had, in his view correctly, not objected.

Decision

The Press Ombudsman finds that while the complaint from Headline concerns solely Principle 10 of the Code and is about the reporting of suicide, the fact that the article concerned is a contemporaneous court report is of crucial importance.  Reporting on court cases is in the public interest, and the constitutional requirement that justice be administered in public creates a right to report that cannot be restricted.  However, membership of the Press Council, which is entered into voluntarily, also requires of editors that in doing so, they strive to uphold the Principles of the Code of Practice. This may on occasion lead them to choose to qualify their right to report, in full, evidence heard during judicial proceedings.

In this case, Sundayworld.com had to strive to balance the demands of Principle 7, which requires that court reports be “fair and accurate”, and Principle 10, the subject of the complaint from Headline, which requires it to avoid giving “excessive detail of the means of suicide”.

The Press Ombudsman considers it relevant that the evidence reported on in this case concerns not suicide alone but what is increasingly referred to as familicide, a relatively new term which is referred to within the article, and which is certainly a complex phenomenon in which the public has a legitimate interest in receiving information. The editor states that the report provides the same level of detail in relation to each death, in the sequence in which the Coroner requested the evidence be presented, and that it would have been “unjust” to do otherwise. The Press Ombudsman accepts that the editor has acted in the public interest in taking this approach.

The Press Ombudsman finds that in this case, Principle 10 of the Code was not breached.   

Headline appealed the Press Ombudsman’s decision to the Press Council on the grounds that there had been an error in her application of the Principles of the Code of Practice.