Connolly Footwear and the Irish Independent

The Press Ombudsman has decided not to uphold a complaint by Mr Matthew Connolly, Director of Connolly Footwear, that an article in the Irish Independent concerning an industrial dispute at the company breached Principles 1 (Truth and Accuracy), 2 (Distinguishing Fact and Comment), and 3 (Fairness and Honesty) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

The article, published on Saturday 10 July 2010, was about a picket on a shop owned by the complainant following an industrial dispute. Mr Connolly said that a statement in the article, that workers had been dismissed by the company without notice after they had refused to accept a cut in their pay and conditions attributed to a spokesman for a trade union, was inaccurate. He also complained that the newspaper did not make it clear that the statements he complained about in the article were opinion and not fact, that it did not seek his views before publication, and that the article falsely claimed that he did not return phone calls from the newspaper.

The newspaper initially responded by offering to publish a letter from the complainant, but declined, on editorial and legal grounds, to publish the letter he submitted. It then commissioned its industrial correspondent to investigate the situation with a view to the possible publication of a follow-up article. The industrial correspondent posed a number of questions about the dispute to Mr Connolly. His response to the correspondent’s questions maintained, inter alia, that the workers in question had effectively dismissed themselves, but his account of the events concerned did not, in the newspaper’s view, contain any evidence directly refuting its original report, and a follow-up article was therefore not published.

Although the accuracy of a news report containing statements made by and properly attributed to one protagonist in a dispute may be disputed, publishing such statements does not, of itself, present a breach of the Code of Practice. When the statements were disputed by the complainant the newspaper endeavoured to establish if they were inaccurate, but as the version of events put forward by the complainant did not contain sufficient evidence to demonstrate that they were inaccurate, this complaint is not upheld.

The complaint under Principle 2 is not upheld because the statements complained about were duly attributed and reported as statements by protagonists and not reported as fact.
The newspaper provided satisfactory evidence that its reporter had contacted the company in question on the day prior to publication to give it an opportunity to put forward its side of the argument, and the complaint that the newspaper did not seek the complainant’s views or give him a chance to respond to the information in the article is therefore not upheld.

Mr Connolly also complained about a caption under a photograph in the article, which referred to the Dun Laoghaire store as being a branch of Connolly Shoes in Bray. Mr Connolly said that both stores were completely separate legal entities. In the context of the article, this is not a significant inaccuracy and does not, therefore, present a breach of the Code of Practice.

There was no evidence that the information published was obtained or published through misrepresentation, subterfuge, or harassment, as would be required to support a complaint under Principle 3, and the complaint under Principle 3 is therefore not upheld.

While the complaints are not, in these circumstances, upheld, it is recommended that the newspaper should be prepared, in the interests of clarifying a complex situation, to consider the possibility of the publication of a different letter from the complainant, provided that any such letter did not raise any legal or editorial issues.

10 September 2010

Mr Connolly appealed the Decision of the Press Ombudsman to the Press Council of Ireland.