OIREACHTAS COMMITTEE:REPEATED TRANSGRESSIONS of the new press code of conduct by a journalist or editor should warrant dismissal, a director of the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) has said.
Frank Cullen, the NNI's co-ordinating director, said he was speaking in a personal capacity, but it was a logical progression for the code, and for the role played by the office of the new Press Ombudsman, Prof John Horgan.
Mr Cullen was addressing the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, chaired by Fianna Fáil TD Sean Ardagh, which is conducting a public review of the constitutional protection for freedom of expression - Article 40.6.1.
He was responding to comments from committee members and its legal adviser about some newspaper stories that were patently false and had seriously abused privacy or other rights. In particular, inaccurate reporting surrounding Liam Lawlor's death in Moscow was cited.
Outlining the code which has been introduced by the print media industry in the past year, Mr Cullen said the new regime had the full backing of the industry. He said that editors were obliged to publish the ombudsman's ruling.
"We believe that publicity and the open nature of the ruling will have an effect," he said.
The NNI and the main commercial television broadcaster TV3 both made submissions to the committee yesterday.
In its submission, the NNI recognised that "the constitutional recognition of freedom of expression is also legitimately subject to restrictions". However, it continued, "the present text of the Constitution dealing with these issues does not recognise the importance of freedom of expression and in particular does not go as far as is required by the European Convention on Human Rights in vindicating freedom of expression".
In a specific reference to journalists protecting the confidentiality of sources, the NNI said this assertion served the public interest.
"Although Article 10 of the ECHR recognises that an essential part of freedom of expression is the right to the media to retain the confidentiality of sources, this has come under scrutiny in Ireland in recent times," it said in reference to the case taken by the Mahon tribunal against The Irish Times.
Barry Andrews (Fianna Fáil) said that he believed The Irish Timeshad been wrong. "What happened in this case was that the sources were destroyed in anticipation of the decision and it frustrated the decision of the courts," he argued.
Mr Cullen also criticised the trend towards very high damages being awarded by juries in libel cases. Referring to a recent award against the Sunday World, Mr Cullen said: "We are under attack with jury awards of €900,000. . . In an ideal world we would prefer if defamation cases were dealt with by a judge. Middle-class people do not want to sit on juries and as a result we get skewed juries," he said.
Gerard Hogan SC, legal adviser to the committee, accepted that Article 40.6 was "awkwardly expressed" and that its language was "antique". But he said that journalistic privilege and large jury awards can be addressed by legislation or the courts and did not need to be put to the people in a referendum.