French and the Irish Mail on Sunday

Complaint

Mrs Janet French complained that an article in the Irish Mail on Sunday published on page 5 of that newspaper on 3 February 2008 was in breach of Principles 1.1 (Truth and Accuracy), 2.1 (Distinguishing Fact and Comment) and 5.3 (Privacy) in relation to eleven distinct statements about the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death. The newspaper argued that the circumstances surrounding Katy French’s death were a subject of legitimate public interest, and that much of the material on which the article was based was obtained from Garda sources, whose accuracy it had no reason to doubt but whose identity they said they could not disclose under Principle 6 of the Code. It said that it had circulated an internal note of Mrs French’s concerns and had asked journalists to bear these in mind in respect of any future articles on the issue, and it offered to ascertain Mrs French’s views by way of interview, or to publish a letter from her. It also gave an undertaking that if in the fullness of time the inquest reveals a different version of events, it would give that version equal prominence.

Decision

The headlines to the article read “Katy died in car after eight-hour drug binge” and “Model tried to go home then suffered six heart attacks and was found foaming at the mouth”. This was reinforced by the article’s self-description in the first paragraph as “the first definitive account of Katy French’s death” and by the second paragraph of the article, which stated that she “suffered up to six heart attacks after eight hours of taking cocaine and drinking champagne and Red Bull”. Each of these statements was presented at the top of the article as fact without qualification. The self-description of the article as “definitive” explicitly invited the reader to accept the newspaper’s version of events as – in the ordinary definition of that word - both final and factual.

Although the newspaper appears to have made considerable efforts to acquire information about the circumstances of Ms French’s death, and accepted what it was told by its sources, unconfirmed reports based on anonymous sources should not, under Principle 2.1, be published without attribution as if they were fact. Although a trailer for the article on an earlier page used quotation marks around the word ‘died’ and included a photo caption that said that Ms French ‘may have had six heart attacks’, and although the article subsequently attributed these and other statements to one or other of its anonymous or hearsay sources, the emphatic presentation of the unconfirmed reports of the circumstances of Ms French’s death in the headlines and introductory paragraphs, as fact and without attribution, was a breach of Principle 2.1. In these circumstances, the publication, as fact, of such unconfirmed reports about Ms French’s death in controversial circumstances, without taking into account the feelings of the grieving family, also amounted to a breach of Principle 5.3.

The remaining statements about which Mrs French complained, however, were not presented at any point as fact but were attributed to one or other of the newspaper’s sources. In the circumstances, it is not possible to assess either their accuracy or the complainant’s assertions that they are untrue, and, as their attribution was clear, they did not present a breach of the Code of Practice. Although they could have been edited and presented with a greater awareness of the likely effect that their publication would have had on Ms French’s family, their publication on the basis of attribution to the newspaper’s sources did not of itself amount to a breach of Principle 5.3.

10 April 2008

The newspaper appealed this decision to the Press Council of Ireland