THE PRESS Ombudsman has partially upheld a complaint by author Justine Delaney-Wilson against the Irish Independent.
The newspaper had incorrectly alleged that her book, The High Society, stated a priest had said he had used cocaine. He was in fact a codeine addict.
However, the ombudsman, Prof John Horgan, accepted the newspaper's inference from her book that a pilot had snorted cocaine in the cockpit of an aircraft.
Delaney-Wilson had complained that the newspaper's article on February 4th, about her RTÉ documentary on drug users, had breached the principle of truth and accuracy.
She said she had never stated in her book or reported that a pilot had snorted cocaine while in a cockpit, or that a priest said he had used cocaine. The priest was quoted in the book as saying he was a codeine addict.
The newspaper accepted it had made an error about the priest being a cocaine user, but it believed the inaccuracy was not significant in the context of the article. However, the ombudsman decided that the error about the priest was "not insignificant in the context of the widespread controversy about the book and the television programme based on it, the criticisms of the complainant's methodology and accuracy, and the substantial difference in the publicity given to cocaine as contrasted with codeine addiction".
He said the newspaper's failure to respond to Delaney-Wilson's correspondence "prolonged the handling of what should have been a relatively simple matter".
But Prof Horgan rejected the author's complaint against the paper, which said a pilot had snorted cocaine in the cockpit.
Delaney-Wilson said she had never made such a claim, but the ombudsman said the newspaper's inference was supported by a passage in the book, "in which the pilot says in relation to cocaine: 'I find sitting still in the confined space of the cockpit excruciating without it.' The inference on the basis of this evidence is reasonable."
The ombudsman's decision, which was made in May, was published yesterday.
The ombudsman's office and the Press Council of Ireland were established on January 1st to provide an independent complaints mechanism. Decisions are posted at www.pressombudsman.ie
