The Defamation Amendment Bill should be signed into law by the Government “without further delay”, the chairman of the Press Council has said.
Noting the Bill has been promised for many years, and that it has already passed most stages of the legislative process, Rory Montgomery said: “I implore legislators and the Minister for Justice to make every effort to bring this lengthy saga to a conclusion.”
Mr Montgomery was speaking at the launch of the 2024 annual report by the Press Council of Ireland.
The report shows the number of complaints received by the press ombudsman was unchanged from 2023 at 305. Of these, 25 were adjudicated upon by the ombudsman, while more than half were not pursued beyond a preliminary enquiry by the complainant.
READ MORE
Three complaints were upheld in the year, which was down from six in 2023.
The Press Council’s code committee is to embark on the first full review of its code of practice in 2026. Press ombudsman Susan McKay launched a new handbook that provides guidance to editors and members of the public on how she applies the code to complaints.
The code is the set of ethical principles that newspapers, online publications and magazines agree to uphold when they join the Press Council.
“In Ireland we are fortunate that both politicians and the public retain high levels of confidence in the honesty and fairness of the press,” said Mr Montgomery. “This cannot be taken for granted – developments in the United States show that.”
Malachy Browne, director of the visual investigations team at The New York Times, addressed the launch.
He spoke about his team’s use of innovative methods to investigate major news events in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, including by using mobile phone videos and security camera footage, satellite images, plane and ship tracking data and artificial intelligence tools.
Noting that independent journalism was under threat in the US and elsewhere, Mr Browne said: “This kind of work shows how wrongdoing by authoritarian governments and others in power can be exposed by journalists who use the abundance of digital and visual evidence now available to them, by combining it with traditional reporting and sometimes with new tools that artificial intelligence offers.”
Ms McKay noted that journalists were also under threat and that this presented a fundamental challenge to the concept of press freedom.
“Threats of violence against journalists are often linked to denigration of the profession and defenders of press freedom,” she said.
“Shockingly, the Committee to Protect Journalists noted that 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists since it began keeping records several decades ago, with 124 killed, nearly two thirds of them Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.”
