Sir, – My friend and colleague Dr Michael Foley makes a very good point (Opinion, April 25th) about the gaping internet-shaped hole in the fractured landscape of Irish journalism regulation. However, he goes beyond the available evidence when he says the existing system of scrutinising the press, an industry-funded complaints process based on a press ombudsman and a press council, has had a “good first six years” and has been “a success”.
It would take more than a few words of British praise for “the Irish model” to support the contention that the system is working in a meaningful way. Have member publications seen an improvement in their journalism since 2008? Has public trust in them increased? Or how about a more realistic question: are users of the service and other interested parties happy with it?
This last question was addressed in a piece of research commissioned in 2011 by the Office of the Press Ombudsman and the Press Council. But I know about this study only because, as a journalism lecturer, I was one of the people interviewed for it: the results were not published.
To seek such evidence is not to question the integrity of the retiring press ombudsman, Prof John Horgan, nor of the various members of the council. But from its tightly limited remit to the adversarial process it engenders, from the low proportion of upheld complaints to the even lower percentage of successful appeals, the system raises obvious issues that can only be answered by a thorough review.
As a recent (partly successful) complainant myself, I have been contacted by people who are dissatisfied by their dealings with the Office of the Press Ombudsman. Like the positive notes sounded by Dr Foley, such anecdotes can be deemed representative only if they are supported by proper research.
Any system of would-be regulation should be at least as transparent and accountable as the industry it seeks to regulate. Neither Irish journalism nor the Press Council has any grounds for complacency. Yours, etc,
HARRY BROWNE,
School of Media,
Dublin Institute
of Technology,
Dublin 2