Frenda and the Trinity News

Complaint

Mr Frenda complained that the recent addition of an article about him to the online pdf archive edition of Trinity News – an article about which he had complained when first published in print in early 2008 when he was President of the Graduate Students’ Union– was a breach of Principle 1.1 (Truth and Accuracy). He said that the article contained a statement attributing certain actions to him that was neither true nor accurate.
Although Trinity News agreed that the actions attributed to Mr Frenda in the article had – as the complainant asserted – been made by a committee of the Graduate Students’ Union for which he had not been responsible at the time, it argued that he had defended that Union’s actions and had thereby associated himself with them. It stated that Mr Frenda had been offered a clarification at the time of publication of the printed version of the paper, that the article in question was clearly satirical, and that the passage of time since publication of the printed version of the article made the complaint unreasonable.

Decision

The use of a term implying the possible misallocation of funds is not – even in a university magazine – a matter of satire, and the republication of such a statement, by way of digital archiving, raises a new issue which might not have arisen otherwise. Republishing the statement by way of digital archiving, as Mr Frenda himself noted, puts the statement in the public domain and permanently available to a global readership. In the circumstances, the view of the Press Ombudsman is that Trinity News should have afforded Mr Frenda an opportunity either to correct or to add to the digital archive by way of clarification in such a way as to prevent the continuing inadvertent republication of an incorrect statement about him. The complaint under Principle 1.1 is therefore upheld.

Mr Frenda also complained under Principle 3 (Fairness and Honesty) and Principle 4 (Respect for Rights) of the Code of Practice. There is insufficient evidence that Trinity News did not strive for fairness and honesty in the procuring and publishing of the information, or that the periodical did not take reasonable care in checking facts before publication, or that its publication was activated by malice. The complaints under Principle 3 and Principle 4 of the Code of Practice are therefore not upheld.

9 November 2009