Mail article 'legitimate opinion piece'

Irish Daily Mail columnist Paul Drury told the High Court today an article written by him about businessman Denis O’Brien was “a legitimate piece of opinion” based on true and accurate facts.

“I was offering a legitimate piece of opinion on a matter of enormous public interest that affected and continues to affect every one in this country,” he said.

Mr Drury was giving evidence on the fourth day of Mr O’Brien’s action against the newspaper publishers, Associated Newspapers, two editors and Mr Drury alleging defamation over the article published on January 22nd, 2010.

Published days after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, it was headlined: “Moriarty is about to report, no wonder Denis O’Brien is acting the saint in stricken Haiti.”

Mr O’Brien claims the article accused him of being a hypocrite over his efforts to assist the relief of Haiti where his telecommunications company Digicel has substantial interests.

The claims are denied and the defendants plead the article was a piece of opinion honestly held based on facts Mr Drury believed were true.

Yesterday, Mr Drury said he believed, in writing the piece, he had a duty to “bring some form of enlightenment” about a matter of public interest. “I believed what I said, I believe it now and I will believe it to the day I die,” he said.

Earlier, he told his counsel Oisin Quinn SC he disagreed strongly with the claim the article was motivated by malice. A letter from Mr O’Brien’s lawyers describing the article as a malicious assault on Mr O’Brien’s good name and character was itself an “outrageous assault on my good name”.

“I think Voltaire may have said, while I may disagree violently with everything you say, I would defend to death your right to say it and I would defend his (O’Brien’s) right to say it about me.”

While he agreed the article was cynical about Mr O’Brien, it was not malicious, he said. “I have not a malicious bone in my body,” he said, adding he bore Mr O’Brien no animus whatsoever. .

“This is about me writing about something of enormous public interest and being cynical about the motives of a very wealthy and powerful man and about what he chose to say. I believe I am entitled to do that and to come to any other conclusion would be a travesty.”

Earlier, Mr Drury said, as a writer of a weekly column, the idea for the piece came after seeing Mr O’Brien in an interview on RTE with reporter Charlie Bird in Haiti.

He said he discussed it with the editor in chief, Paul Field, and approached writing it with a certain amount of trepidation because he was aware Mr O’Brien was a powerful man “and one does not lightly take on the 250th wealthiest man in the world.”

A reference to Mr O’Brien “popping up” in two interviews with Charlie Bird of RTE, as well as in another with former US president Bill Clinton, was something many people might have commented on when they saw him, he said.