Cahill and the Sunday World

The Press Ombudsman has decided to uphold a complaint by Mrs Frances Cahill that some statements in an article published in the Sunday World on 17 April 2011 were in breach of Principle 2 (Distinguishing Fact and Comment) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines, because they were rumours or unconfirmed reports reported as fact.

There was insufficient evidence to make a decision about a number of complaints under Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy), and a complaint under Principle 3 (Fairness and Honesty) was not upheld.

Mrs Cahill complained that statements published in the newspaper’s special 32-page “Crime Magazine” saying that she had been living with a new lover in the UK after her husband’s murder, and that she had gone with members of his gang to search for her husband’s “ill-gotten gains” in the Dublin mountains, were in breach of Principle 2 of the Code of Practice. While these statements were identical to or based on statements previously published in the Sunday World and in other newspapers in 2004 and 2005, there was no evidence from any of the published articles that the statements were other than unconfirmed reports or rumours and, as they were reported as fact, the complaint under Principle 2 is upheld.

Mrs Cahill also complained that a number of other statements in the article were in breach of Principle 1 ( Truth and Accuracy) of the Code of Practice. She maintained, in particular, that a statement in the article that she had given an interview to a named newspaper in 2002 – an interview on which some of the statements complained about in the Sunday World article were based – was untrue. The newspaper cited a book published in 1985 and numerous articles published by itself and other titles between 2000 and 2010 which, in its view, gave sufficient credence to the statements it had made about the complainant, and which, it said, had not, in the interim, been challenged or refuted by the complainant. Mrs Cahill said that she had chosen, for many reasons, to ignore the things that had been written about her over a period of 20 years
but that she had now decided that she had had enough, and hence lodged a complaint about this particular article.

The complaint was unusual in that the article contained no original material whatsoever, and merely republished previously published material. However, it is important to point out that evidence that the accuracy of previously published material was not challenged at the time of its original publication is not, of itself, proof that the originally published material was truthful and accurate.
Although the truth and accuracy of the statements complained about was vigorously asserted by the newspaper and equally vigorously contested by the complainant, there was insufficient evidence to prove either their truth or their falsity. Accordingly, no decision can be made on this part of the complaint under Principle 1.

The complainant did not provide any evidence that the matter published had been obtained or published through misrepresentation, subterfuge or harassment, as would be required to support a complaint under Principle 3.

29 July 2011