THE ANNUAL report of the Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman has yielded some comfort for the print media and also some reassurance for the public. The report, the third since the organisation came into being, was published on Friday and showed the level of complaints to have dropped to 315 last year, from 372 the previous year. Thus press industry concern that the existence of the council and the ombudsman would manifest an ever-increasing volume of complaints has not been realised. At the same time, the report reveals that a greater level of complaints are being resolved or conciliated to the satisfaction of both the complainant and the newspaper. This is as it should be.
The industry though would need to take heed that, while the largest number of complaints again concerned truth and accuracy, complaints about intrusion of privacy were more than double the level of the previous year. But both the industry and the public should take considerable satisfaction from the fact that the organisation is conciliating or ruling on complaints that, in the past, would have ended up in the courts. The public are thus getting a speedy resolution to their complaint and without any of the delay, financial cost and risk that is involved in litigation.
While the efforts of the council and ombudsman are clearly paying dividends, the organisation remains a work-in-progress. As Dr Maurice Manning, president of the Irish Human Rights Commission, noted at the launch of the report, “a good start has been made” but, he added, the organisation is not perfect. It must concentrate on further improvement as it evolves.
Dr Manning also stressed how important it is that the organisation is not just independent of the print media but that it is seen to be independent. This priority cannot be overstated and the work done by the former chairman Prof Tom Mitchell and his successor Dáithi O’Ceallaigh has done much to deliver on this requirement.
The organisation faces considerable challenges as it evolves. Chief among these is the growth of the internet and, in particular, the blogosphere – an interactive journalism by both amateurs and professionals which is growing exponentially and has no limits. Newspapers provide for comments to be posted on their websites which can be difficult to moderate. Just one internet-only publication has aligned itself with the council so it has no remit for almost all the content published on Irish internet sites. The public will hope that it should and soon.
The need for a free media has never been greater. Many important issues, child abuse for example, might never have been brought to light only for the ability of the media to investigate, validate and report. The Moriarty tribunal pointed out that two media reports, one in print and the other broadcast, persuaded the tribunal of the need to widen its investigations. The media’s lifeblood is honest and fair reportage. It can – and should – be a nuisance to those who wish to supress information.