Colgan and The Argus

The Press Ombudsman has decided that The Argus made an offer of sufficient remedial action to resolve a complaint by Mr. William Colgan that a report of a court case of 7 December 2011, in which a charge of careless driving against him was dismissed, was in breach of Principle 7 (Court Reporting) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and magazines.

The complainant objected to the report of the case on a number of grounds, many of them related to what he maintained were omissions that were unfair to him, to the newspaper’s description of him by his surname only, to the omission of the name of the Garda involved in the case and to a mistake in its account of the evidence he had given in his defence.

The editor accepted that its report of the complainant’s evidence had been in error because of a typographical error by the reporter, and offered to publish a correction and an apology. Apart from that, the editor said that his paper’s report was fair and accurate, that it followed its normal practice in the way in which it referred to individuals involved in court cases as defendants or witnesses, including Gardai, and that its reporter’s note confirmed the accuracy of part of the report dealing with a remark made by the judge in the case.

In the opinion of the Press Ombudsman, the only matter that called for a correction was the typographical error in relation to the complainant’s evidence, and the proposed correction and apology was an unambiguous and complete response to this part of the complaint.

8 March 2012